Christie, Christopher J

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      How Christie and Trump’s Friendship Flourished, Then Deteriorated

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      The two men had a relationship that could be genuinely warm, and at other times transactional. Now they are vying for the presidency in open hostility.Their friendship began after an introduction through Donald J. Trump’s sister. It ended nearly 20 years later, when Mr. Trump refused to concede the 2020 election to Joseph R. Biden Jr.In between, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, and Mr. Trump had a relationship that could be genuinely warm, with chats about politics and current events, and at other times transactional.Mr. Christie gave Mr. Trump a boost by endorsing his 2016 candidacy after ending his own bid for the Republican nomination, and then coached him for debates and led his initial presidential transition team. In return, Mr. Trump passed him over for the roles of vice president and attorney general.Mr. Trump eventually turned back to Mr. Christie for other advice during his term. But by the midway point of the presidency, Mr. Christie seemed content to be on the outside.Their last exchange was in August 2021, according to a person briefed on the matter, when the former president had an aide send Mr. Christie a testy message.Now, they have entered a new chapter: open hostility. Mr. Christie announced his second presidential campaign on Tuesday in New Hampshire, aiming to stop Mr. Trump from a second term in the White House.“I think he’s a coward and I think he’s a puppet of Putin,” Mr. Christie, speaking recently to the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, said of the man he once supported.Here’s a look back at how their relationship grew, thrived and then wilted.Casual Acquaintances, Then Presidential RivalsMr. Christie was a United States attorney in New Jersey, where Mr. Trump still had casinos, when the two men first dined together.That May 2002 introduction over dinner came through an intermediary, Maryanne Trump Barry, Mr. Trump’s older sister, who was a federal judge in the state at the time and described Mr. Trump to Mr. Christie as “my little brother.” In Mr. Christie’s 2019 memoir, “Let Me Finish,” he wrote about his first impressions of Mr. Trump, who in two years would begin his run as the star of the reality TV show “The Apprentice.”“Donald was opinionated,” Mr. Christie wrote. “He was bombastic. He was entertaining. He talked about his business with infectious enthusiasm and considerable detail. I came away with the impression that public Donald and the private Donald were pretty much one and the same.”It was soon clear that Mr. Christie could end up as a candidate for governor someday. He won the office in his first attempt, in 2009, two years before Mr. Trump considered running for the White House against President Barack Obama.Mr. Christie won the governorship in 2009 alongside Kim Guadagno, who served as lieutenant governor.Jeff Zelevansky/ReutersBoth men knew each other in the way that prominent people in the New York media market tend to: casually, with paths that periodically crossed.In 2015, both Mr. Christie and Mr. Trump ended up declaring presidential candidacies.Mr. Christie, by then hobbled by the “Bridgegate” political retribution scandal, had nonetheless fashioned a national political brand as a straight-talking candidate.By contrast, some viewed Mr. Trump as a sideshow who would eventually fade, even as he was leading in the polls. At the time, Mr. Trump told Mr. Christie privately that he didn’t expect his campaign to last beyond October 2015.Their relationship began to be tested. Two months after Mr. Trump’s entrance into the race, Mr. Christie told Fox News that the New York businessman didn’t have the “temperament” or experience to be president. Mr. Trump taunted Mr. Christie for being absent from New Jersey, where he was still governor.Ultimately, Mr. Trump overshadowed his newfound rival — and all other rivals — with an endless stream of inflammatory pronouncements, including a proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country.Mr. Christie and Mr. Trump traded barbs after they both entered the race for their party’s presidential nomination.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesMr. Trump saved his most hostile barbs for candidates other than Mr. Christie. In turn, the governor trained his most aggressive fire on Senator Marco Rubio of Florida during a debate in New Hampshire shortly before the state’s primary, mocking him for a “memorized 25-second speech.”But after staking his candidacy on New Hampshire, Mr. Christie finished a dismal sixth and dropped out of the race.A Key Ally, Up to a PointWhen Mr. Trump won the South Carolina primary, Mr. Christie told allies the writing was on the wall — it was clear Mr. Trump was on track to become the nominee.“I am proud to be here to endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States,” Mr. Christie said at an endorsement event in Florida in February 2016, as astonished reporters watched him praise Mr. Trump’s candidacy. After Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Mr. Christie was one of the first prominent Republicans to endorse Mr. Trump at a time when the party’s leadership was still trying to stop his ascent.Soon, Mr. Christie was a key adviser to Mr. Trump. He was also for a time considered as a potential running mate, but some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, including members of his family, argued against it. (Mr. Christie had also prosecuted the father of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner years earlier, and Mr. Kushner was opposed to the selection of Mr. Christie.)After Mr. Christie endorsed Mr. Trump, he became a member of Mr. Trump’s inner circle and helped lead his transition to the White House.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesMr. Trump ultimately chose Mike Pence, then the governor of Indiana, who had been introduced to Mr. Trump through Mr. Christie.Mr. Trump tried to keep Mr. Christie on the hook, the former governor wrote in his memoir, insisting in a phone call to Mr. Christie that he hadn’t decided on his running mate yet, even as he made plans to fly Mr. Pence to New York for a news conference.Mr. Christie led Mr. Trump’s preparations for the general-election debates against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. But after the October 2016 release of a recording in which Mr. Trump described grabbing women by their genitals, Mr. Trump privately griped that Mr. Christie had not more vocally backed him.Mr. Christie also served as the head of his transition team, a job from which he was dismissed shortly after Election Day by Mr. Kushner; Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist for Mr. Trump; and Reince Priebus, who would become Mr. Trump’s first White House chief of staff.Behind the Scenes, DistancingMr. Trump asked Mr. Christie to lead a task force on opioids, an issue Mr. Christie had been concerned about as governor. Mr. Christie was also said to be a personal favorite of Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania.As president, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Christie to lead a task force on opioids but passed over Mr. Christie for other roles in his administration.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Mr. Trump decided against giving him the job of attorney general, which went to Mr. Sessions. Instead, Mr. Christie has said, the president offered him various roles at different points, including labor secretary and secretary of the Homeland Security Department.Mr. Trump also took a suggestion from Mr. Christie as to who could replace the fired F.B.I. director, James A. Comey. It was Mr. Christie’s lawyer during the Bridgegate scandal, Christopher A. Wray, who was appointed and remains atop the agency. Mr. Trump soon started complaining that Mr. Wray was not doing what he wanted at the agency, and blamed Mr. Christie for a nomination that Mr. Trump had put forward.Mr. Christie took himself out of consideration to succeed John F. Kelly as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff at the end of 2018 after Mr. Trump had offered the job to Mr. Christie. By then, it had become clear that Mr. Trump was cycling through staff members and firing them at a rapid clip.In February 2020, Mr. Trump pardoned a former software chief executive whose clemency Mr. Christie had lobbied for.That year, Mr. Christie wrote Mr. Trump a lengthy memo instructing him how to handle the coronavirus pandemic. It was ignored.Mr. Christie’s relationship with the president grew increasingly strained and later severed after the 2020 presidential election, when Mr. Christie said he advised Mr. Trump to concede to Joseph R. Biden Jr.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. Trump brought Mr. Christie in for debate preparations once again, and some of his aides faulted Mr. Christie when Mr. Trump’s initial debate against Mr. Biden was disastrous. (Mr. Trump appeared physically unwell at the debate and may have already been affected by the coronavirus; the news of his Covid diagnosis came days later.)When both Mr. Trump and Mr. Christie were hospitalized with serious bouts of Covid shortly after that debate, Mr. Trump called his debate coach at the hospital. “Are you going to say you got it from me?” Mr. Trump asked Mr. Christie, the former governor later recounted in his second book, “Republican Rescue.” They both recovered, but Mr. Christie made clear he thought he should have worn a mask at the prep sessions, angering Mr. Trump.BreakupHours after Election Day ended, when Mr. Trump delivered a speech claiming widespread fraud, Mr. Christie, by then a contributor for ABC News, said on air that Mr. Trump needed to offer proof.In an interview with The New York Times in November 2022, Mr. Christie said he had last spoken with Mr. Trump in December 2020, after the president saw him deride Mr. Trump’s legal team on television. Mr. Christie told him he should concede the election to Mr. Biden and host the president-elect in the White House.“He told me he would never, ever, ever, ever do that,” Mr. Christie said. “And that was the last time we spoke.”In 2021, Mr. Trump described Mr. Christie as an “opportunist” to a reporter. Four months later, he had an aide send Mr. Christie a printout of a tweet by Mr. Christie related to the pardon that he had sought for the former software executive. “Chris,” he wrote, according to the person briefed on it, “How quickly people (some) forget – Best Wishes,” with his signature.Mr. Christie responded cordially, wishing Mr. Trump well.Shane Goldmacher More

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      What to Know About Chris Christie as He Enters 2024 Presidential Race

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      Mr. Christie, a onetime star presidential recruit who finished in sixth place in New Hampshire in 2016, has become a fierce Trump critic.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who announced a second campaign for president on Tuesday after a disappointing run in 2016, has had a roller coaster of a political career in more ways than one.In the span of four years, he went from star presidential recruit to scandal-dogged sixth-place finisher in New Hampshire. In the next seven, he went from serving as one of Donald J. Trump’s most influential advisers to advertising himself as the only candidate brave enough to denounce Mr. Trump to his face.Here are five things to know about Mr. Christie.He had a meteoric rise in his first term as governor …Mr. Christie first drew national attention in 2009, when he was elected governor of New Jersey over a Democratic incumbent, Jon Corzine.He quickly notched legislative victories for Republicans in a Democratic-leaning state, including passing a major overhaul of New Jersey’s public employee pension system.Making use of a tactic that is now commonplace but was more striking at the time, he also attacked critics at public events — in 2012, he told a law student who had heckled him that if “you conduct yourself like that in a courtroom, your rear end’s going to be thrown in jail, idiot.” His showmanship and combativeness made him appealing both to Republican voters and to party operatives, who began urging him to run for president in 2012.He didn’t, choosing instead to give the keynote address for Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention, become the chairman of the Republican Governors Association and establish himself as an early front-runner for 2016.His profile rose further after his management of the state’s recovery from Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when he famously welcomed President Barack Obama to New Jersey — an image that infuriated some Republicans but helped cement Mr. Christie’s reputation as someone who could switch modes from attack dog to bipartisan statesman as needed.… and a ‘Bridgegate’-fueled crash in his second term.If Mr. Christie’s first term as governor was politically triumphant, his second term was politically calamitous because of a scandal that became known as Bridgegate.In September 2013, not long before Mr. Christie was up for re-election as governor, high-ranking officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates bridges and tunnels between the two states, closed two of three lanes onto the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee, N.J. The closings caused chaos.The ostensible rationale was to study traffic patterns. But it soon emerged that a Christie ally at the Port Authority had ordered the closings as part of a scheme to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing the governor’s re-election campaign — and that he had done so after Mr. Christie’s deputy chief of staff emailed him, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” In a trial in 2016 against the deputy chief of staff and a Port Authority official, a witness testified that Mr. Christie himself had been told of the political reason for the closings while they were happening, and had laughed.Mr. Christie denied involvement in the scandal, but it consumed his second term and proved a serious liability in his first presidential campaign. By the time he left office, he had the lowest approval rating recorded for any New Jersey governor.A campaign event in New Hampshire for Mr. Christie’s 2016 presidential run. Mr. Christie never gained much traction then — against any of his competitors, much less Mr. Trump.Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York TimesHis 2016 campaign served to knock out Marco Rubio.Mr. Christie first ran for president in 2016, a year that made mincemeat of quite a few Republicans seen as rising stars in the party, and he was no exception.He never gained much traction — against any of his competitors, much less Mr. Trump — and came in sixth in the New Hampshire primary after focusing his efforts there. He dropped out the next day.But Mr. Christie did have a significant impact on the trajectory of the Republican race, just not to his own benefit.He helped pave the way for Mr. Trump’s nomination by wounding the man who had looked to be his strongest opponent: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.In a debate in New Hampshire in early February, Mr. Christie went after Mr. Rubio mercilessly — accusing him of being inauthentic and relying on canned lines, a criticism Mr. Rubio lent credence to by responding with canned lines. (“There it is, everybody,” Mr. Christie replied.) The attack was so effective that the debate audience began to boo Mr. Rubio.Mr. Christie and Donald Trump ahead of a Trump rally in 2016.Mark Makela for The New York TimesHe was a member of Trump’s inner circle for years …After ending his own campaign, Mr. Christie quickly endorsed Mr. Trump, praising him for “rewriting the playbook of American politics.” His endorsement was a big deal given that most of the Republican establishment was still trying to find anyone other than Mr. Trump to coalesce around.Mr. Christie became a highly influential adviser to the Trump campaign. In characteristically combative fashion, he defended Mr. Trump even when he went too far for other Republicans.Implicit in the alliance was that Mr. Christie would get a high-ranking job in the Trump administration, perhaps even the vice presidency. But while Mr. Trump chose him to lead his presidential transition team and offered him cabinet posts, Mr. Christie did not get the job he really wanted: attorney general.Even so, he stayed loyal, helping Mr. Trump with debate preparation in 2020. He did not break away until Mr. Trump tried to overturn his election loss — at which point Mr. Christie began speaking forcefully, including in a book.Mr. Christie greets voters and students at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., earlier this year.Holly Ramer/Associated Press… but has reinvented himself as Trump Enemy No. 1.Mr. Christie is pitching himself as the only candidate willing to confront Mr. Trump head-on. (Though Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has begun to do that, other candidates largely have not, lest they alienate the pro-Trump Republican base.)In a pre-campaign stop in New Hampshire in March, Mr. Christie tried to convince voters that he was the man to do this by evoking his long-ago brawl with Mr. Rubio: “You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco,” he said.Voters remain unconvinced. In a recent Monmouth University poll, Mr. Christie was the only candidate or potential candidate with a net-negative approval rating among Republicans — only 21 percent of whom viewed him favorably, compared with 47 percent who viewed him unfavorably.Mr. Christie said in New Hampshire in April: “I don’t think that anybody is going to beat Donald Trump by sidling up to him, playing footsie with him and pretending that you’re almost like him.”But the fact that he supported Mr. Trump throughout his presidency went unmentioned until a teenager asked a question: Given his denunciations of Mr. Trump for undermining democracy, did he still believe Mr. Trump had been a better choice than Mrs. Clinton?“I still would’ve picked Trump,” Mr. Christie acknowledged. More

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      For Christie, Winning Would Be Great. Beating Trump Would Be a Close Second.

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      The former New Jersey governor’s presidential bid is a long shot. But if he takes out Donald J. Trump along the way, Chris Christie may consider it a victory.Chris Christie is embarking on a mission that even some of his fiercest allies must squint to see ending in the White House.But Mr. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who is now 60 and more than five years removed from holding elected office, has been undeterred, talking up an undertaking that he frames as almost as important as winning the presidency: extricating the Republican Party from the grip of Donald J. Trump.“You need to think about who’s got the skill to do that and who’s got the guts to do it because it’s not going to end nicely no matter what,” Mr. Christie said in March at the same New Hampshire college where he plans to announce his long-shot bid on Tuesday.“His end,” he said of the former president, “will not be a calm and quiet conclusion.”As he enters the race, Mr. Christie has cast himself as the one candidate unafraid to give voice to the frustrations of Republicans who have watched Mr. Trump transform the party and have had enough — either of the ideological direction or the years of compounding electoral losses.For Mr. Christie — who lent crucial legitimacy to Mr. Trump’s then-celebrity campaign by endorsing him after his own 2016 presidential campaign failed — it is quite the reversal. After helping to fuel Mr. Trump’s rise, Mr. Christie has now set out to author his downfall.The question is whether there is any market for what he is selling inside a Republican Party with whom Mr. Trump remains overwhelmingly popular.“Just being like ‘I’m the kamikaze candidate’ — I’m not sure that’s going to play,” said Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary to Mr. Trump. “For those people who don’t like Trump because of the mean tweets, are they going to like the guy who is mean about Donald Trump?”Mr. Christie’s flaws as an anti-Trump messenger are manifest. For almost all of Mr. Trump’s four years in the White House, Mr. Christie stood by the president — even catching a near-fatal Covid-19 infection during debate preparations in the fall of 2020 — only breaking with him over his stolen election lie and then the violence of Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Christie listening to Mr. Trump during a news conference in 2020. Mr. Christie stood by Mr. Trump during his entire presidency.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe coming campaign, then, is expected to be something of a redemption tour. Pulled by the allure of the presidency for more than a decade — his decision not to run in 2012 at the peak of his popularity has been the subject of widespread second-guessing — he begins another run unburdened by expectations.Yes, he is trying to win. He has said he would not run unless he saw a pathway to victory. (“I’m not a paid assassin,” he told Politico.) But he also wants to turn the party from Mr. Trump.“He won’t like it, but he’s a loser. It’s that simple,” Mr. Christie said of Mr. Trump in an interview last year, shortly after the disappointing midterm election for Republicans.It’s the kind of quotable line and anti-Trump message that has turned a number of breakaway Republicans into CNN commentators or MSNBC stars and also made them former elected officials.Central to Mr. Christie’s pitch to disaffected Republicans is his debating skill. The most memorable achievement of his 2016 bid was his takedown of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.“You’d better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco,” he said at his March event, regaling the crowd with the story of his bruising confrontation with Mr. Rubio. “Because that’s the only thing that’s going to defeat Donald Trump.”The first challenge for Mr. Christie, however, won’t be facing Mr. Trump. It will be qualifying for the debate stage. The Republican National Committee’s threshold of 40,000 donors across 20 states could prove especially arduous for a candidate without a small-donor following and whose anti-Trump message seems more likely to lure Democratic contributors than conservative ones.So far, Mr. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Vivek Ramaswamy, a self-funding businessman, have announced that they have hit that threshold. (There is also a 1 percent polling requirement.)Mr. Spicer, who later hosted a program on Newsmax, the right-wing cable network, noted that Mr. Christie “hasn’t exactly been on conservative media” to maintain a following on the right. “He’s hanging out on ABC,” Mr. Spicer said of the mainstream news network where Mr. Christie has been a paid commentator.Quick with a quote and savvy about the media — Mr. Christie turned snapping at reporters into a selling point for the G.O.P. base a decade before Mr. DeSantis — he may be banking on the thirst of news organizations for a frontal and colorful fight with Mr. Trump.After Mr. Trump’s recent town hall on CNN, when he would not say whether he was hoping Ukraine would win the war against Russia, Mr. Christie slashed him as “a puppet of Putin.”Yet even the relatively small faction of Republicans opposed to returning Mr. Trump to power may be leery of Mr. Christie. He not only provided a key early endorsement in 2016, he led his presidential transition, and was passed over for some top jobs while serving as an informal adviser and debate coach through the 2020 election.“Now you found Jesus?” questioned Rick Wilson, who was an outspoken Republican critic of Mr. Trump before leaving the party entirely. “And now you’re going to be the guy to take the fight to Trump?”“The credibility factor of Christie as a Trump antagonist is somewhere around zero,” Mr. Wilson said.When he makes his 2024 campaign official on Tuesday, Mr. Christie is expected to flesh out his vision for the nation in greater detail.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesEarly polling shows that Mr. Christie faces perhaps an even steeper uphill climb than other candidates who are polling with low single-digit support. He received 2 percent in a late May CNN poll, for instance, tied for fifth place with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.But of all the Republican candidates in the poll, the highest share — 60 percent — said Mr. Christie was someone they would not support under any circumstance. That figure was 15 percent for Mr. DeSantis and 16 percent for Mr. Trump.“You look at it objectively, it’s hard to see a clear lane for Chris Christie, being a Trump opponent and then a Trump acolyte and now a Trump opponent again,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who is unaligned in the 2024 race, though some partners at his firm are working with Mr. DeSantis. “There’s not a lot of room in the Republican electorate for that right now.”Still, in an increasingly crowded field of Republicans — former Vice President Mike Pence and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota are also expected to join the race this week — the Christie team sees opportunity by being the lone candidate interested in breaking so clearly with Mr. Trump.Other lower-polling candidates have avoided criticizing the former president aggressively, in an attempt not to turn off his supporters. Some, like Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and governor of South Carolina, have preferred to take shots at Mr. DeSantis, vying to emerge as the leading Trump alternative by tackling him first. But Mr. Christie’s advisers see the path to the nomination running through Mr. Trump.His supporters have organized a super PAC, Tell It Like It Is, led by a number of veteran Republicans operatives. And Mr. Christie’s decision to begin in New Hampshire is a sign of the state’s central role in his political calculus, where he also based much of his 2016 campaigning, when he held more than 100 town halls. On Tuesday, he is expected to flesh out his vision for the nation in greater detail.But there are widespread doubts about how far Mr. Christie’s designs go beyond knocking down Mr. Trump. In an editorial on the eve of his kickoff, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wondered if the candidate might have an unintended impact on the race.“If Mr. Christie isn’t a guided missile aimed at Mr. Trump, is he an unguided one, liable to blow up, say, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis?” the editorial board wrote.Sean Hannity, the influential Fox News host, recently questioned whether he even wanted to give Mr. Christie airtime. “You’re only getting in this race because you hate Donald Trump and want to bludgeon Donald Trump,” Mr. Hannity said on air. “I don’t see Chris Christie actually wanting to run and win the nomination. He views it as his role to be the enforcer and to attack Trump.”Mr. Trump posted the clip on his social media site, Truth Social.Maggie Haberman More

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      Today’s Top News: The Growing 2024 G.O.P. Field, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows — including this one — which we’re making available to readers for a limited time. Download the audio app here.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.From left: Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Vice President Mike Pence and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota.Charles Krupa/Associated Press, Alex Brandon/Associated Press, Mike Mccleary/The Bismarck Tribune, via Associated PressOn Today’s Episode:The U.S. and Russia Say a Major Ukrainian Operation Has Begun, with our Ukraine correspondent Thomas Gibbons-NeffS.E.C. Accuses Binance of Mishandling Funds and Lying to Regulators, with our finance reporter Emily FlitterThe 2024 G.O.P. Field Balloons This Week, Adding Three New Candidates, with our national correspondent Trip GabrielEli Cohen More

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      Can Christie Succeed as ‘Trump Slayer’? New Jersey Has Thoughts.

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      The former governor, with his ready wit and considerable baggage, intends to jump into the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday.Chris Christie left office in New Jersey with abysmal popularity ratings. His 2016 presidential run was a short-lived flop. He has a reputation as a bully and is perhaps best known for a notorious political retribution scheme called Bridgegate.But as Mr. Christie, a two-term governor and former federal prosecutor, prepares to wade into the 2024 Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, voters who know him best appear open to his underdog rematch with former President Donald J. Trump, if only for its potential as a grab-the-popcorn thriller.A one-on-one debate between Mr. Trump and Mr. Christie “would have more viewers than the Super Bowl,” said Jon Bramnick, a Republican state senator who moonlights as a standup comic.“Trump may be able to call you a name,” he said. “But Christie will take that name, twist it and come back with three or four things that will leave Trump lying down waiting for the count.”Any race that pits Mr. Christie against Mr. Trump is bound to be especially personal. Mr. Trump seemed to find joy in belittling Mr. Christie from the White House; Mr. Christie blamed Mr. Trump for giving him a bout of Covid that left him gravely ill and hospitalized.In interviews with New Jersey voters, Mr. Christie’s assets and liabilities were repeatedly described as two sides of the same coin.To moderates thirsty for a centrist voice: He is not Mr. Trump.And to Trump loyalists who might prefer that Mr. Christie retreat permanently to his beach house in Bay Head, it was much the same refrain: He is not Mr. Trump.“Anybody in the mix who’s not Trump is good,” David Philips, 64, said Friday during his lunch break in Trenton, the capital, where he has worked as a state construction official for 20 years. He said he tended to vote for Democrats and was never a big fan of Mr. Christie.“But he’s a reasonable guy compared to Trump,” Mr. Philips said.After dropping out of the 2016 presidential contest, Mr. Christie became one of Mr. Trump’s biggest boosters. But he is now positioning himself as the teller of hard Trump truths — a perhaps unlikely messenger with a message that will be challenging to sell to a party full of Trump supporters.Mr. Christie’s entry into the race comes less than six years after he left Trenton with an approval rating of just 15 percent, according to two polls taken during his last summer in office. At the time, it was the worst rating of any governor in any state surveyed by Quinnipiac University in more than 20 years.Last month, a Monmouth University poll of 655 Republican-leaning voters nationwide showed Mr. Christie with unfavorable ratings of 47 percent, higher than any other official or likely Republican presidential candidate.Jeanette Hoffman, a New Jersey Republican strategist, predicted that Mr. Christie would cast himself as the candidate best positioned to be “the Trump slayer.”“This whole tell-it-like-it-is strategy — he’s going to double down on that,” she said.Still, she acknowledged that the odds against him were long.Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Christie, 60, is famously combative. And many of his most memorable clashes are well documented.There was the time he was filmed shouting down a heckler on a Jersey Shore boardwalk while holding an ice cream cone.Memes linger from 2017, when he was photographed lounging with his family on a state-run beach closed to the general public over Fourth of July weekend because he and the Legislature had failed to approve a spending plan for the fiscal year.Mr. Christie, far right, was photographed at Island Beach State Park in 2017 while it was closed to the public.Andrew Mills/NJ Advance Media, via Associated PressAnd it was clear that his baseball days were behind him in 2015 when he took the field at Yankee Stadium for a charity game wearing a Mets uniform during his second term as governor. But he also earned widespread kudos that night, and an M.V.P. award, for having the guts to step into the batter’s box in the first place.For those in New Jersey cheering on his presidential run, that in-your-face chutzpah remains a key selling point.Even detractors express grudging respect for the former governor’s willingness to flex his political and rhetorical muscles.“He’s an audacious guy,” said Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., where two of the George Washington Bridge’s three lanes were closed down for four days in 2013 as part of a plot that endangered public safety and became known as Bridgegate. “He’s a man who speaks his mind, and I think in today’s day and age you do need that.”The 2013 “Bridgegate” scandal remains well known to voters. Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesStill, Mr. Sokolich said there was no way he would ever vote for Mr. Christie.“If he was ever to reach the office of the presidency, I just hope his talents for selecting people for high-level positions have improved,” Mr. Sokolich said, referring to a Christie aide who unleashed havoc on the borough’s roadways with an email: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”Mr. Christie was never accused of criminal wrongdoing, and the convictions of two aides were overturned in 2020 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the plot, designed to punish a political opponent, was an abuse of power but not a federal crime.David Wildstein, who admitted to being an architect of the traffic gridlock while working at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, has known Mr. Christie since the two attended Livingston High School. He was the star witness at the trial, testifying that Mr. Christie was told about the bridge plan two days after the lane closures began and that he laughed approvingly. Mr. Christie has maintained that he had nothing to do with the closings.Mr. Wildstein, in an interview, characterized his onetime ally as a cartoonlike character.“He’s the guy who stands on the sidelines at a Little League game and yells at the umpire,” said Mr. Wildstein, 61, whose guilty plea was vacated in 2020 after the Supreme Court ruling and who now runs the New Jersey Globe, a popular political news site in New Jersey.But, he added, “It would be crazy for anybody to definitively say somebody can’t win.”Mr. Christie appeared with Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia at an election rally in Atlanta in 2022.Audra Melton for The New York Times More

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      Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Doug Burgum to Announce for 2024 This Week

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      Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Doug Burgum are set to announce their presidential campaigns this week, the latest entrants in a rapidly growing Republican primary.The growing field of Republicans running for president is set to expand by three this week, with the entry of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Vice President Mike Pence and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota. The field continues to expand in part because hopefuls see opportunity in the struggle of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to become the undisputed challenger to former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. DeSantis trails Mr. Trump by about 30 points in national polls of Republican voters. No one else is within hailing distance, but with one in four Republicans still looking for an alternative to the two front-runners, a fierce competition to be that other option is emerging.All three of the latest entrants have to be considered long shots, at least for now.But each will get a momentary burst of attention when declaring his candidacy, with the hope that from small sparks a brush fire will spread.Chris ChristieWhen: Tuesday, June 6Where: A town-hall-style event at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics outside Manchester.The strategy: Mr. Christie, who dropped out of the 2016 primary early and became a supporter of Mr. Trump’s, has cast himself as the former president’s harshest critic in the Republican field. He says Mr. Trump is unfit to serve after inciting the attack on the Capitol. Mr. Christie’s team recently said that he would run a campaign focused on “mixing it up in the news cycle and engaging Trump.”But being an outspoken Trump critic has so far paid little dividends. Among 10 declared or potential 2024 candidates tested in a Monmouth poll last week, Mr. Christie was viewed the most negatively by Republican voters (21 percent viewed him favorably and 47 percent unfavorably). His strategy is to make it onto a debate stage, where his trademark pugilism, he has promised, will be aimed at Mr. Trump.Mr. Christie is likely to campaign heavily in New Hampshire, where a large number of independents are expected to vote in the primary next year, offering Mr. Christie his best opportunity to damage Mr. Trump.Mike PenceWhen: Wednesday, June 7Where: A rally with voters in Des Moines, followed by a CNN town hall at 9 p.m. Eastern.The strategy: The former vice president brought credibility with social conservatives to the 2016 ticket, but his star faded with the party base after he refused to comply with Mr. Trump’s efforts to block President Biden’s victory. As an evangelical Christian and former Indiana governor, Mr. Pence is a natural fit with Iowa conservatives, and he is likely to focus much of his campaigning there in the hope of a strong showing in the first nominating contest next year. His campaign intends to reintroduce him to voters as his own man, not just Mr. Trump’s No. 2.But Mr. Pence, who espouses traditional Regeanesque views on economic and foreign policy — he supports aid to Ukraine — finds himself at odds with the current populist thrust of the party. In the Monmouth poll, he had the second highest unfavorable number (35 percent, versus 46 percent favorable). When Sean Hannity of Fox News mentioned at a town hall with Mr. Trump on Thursday that Mr. Pence would soon join the race, there were boos.Doug BurgumWhen: Wednesday, June 7Where: Fargo, N.D.The strategy: North Dakota’s governor, who is little-known outside his home state, made a large fortune in computer software, and is in a position to self-fund his longer-than-long-shot campaign. He has said he believes that 60 percent of American voters constitute a “silent majority” that feels ignored by intense ideological debates that dominate politics. “There’s definitely a yearning for some alternatives right now,’’ Mr. Burgum told a Fargo news site.Energy policy is central to his message: As governor, Mr. Burgum set a goal of reaching carbon neutrality in North Dakota by 2030. He aimed to do so not by diminishing dependence on fossil fuels, a key part of the state’s economy, but by accelerating technology to capture carbon emissions in the ground.The governor is low-key and notably not aligned with Trump-style populism. That means that, in addition to being little known, he will be paddling against the current in today’s Republican rapids. More

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      Chris Christie Gets a Super PAC Ahead of His Likely 2024 Bid

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      The former governor of New Jersey, who has been at times both a confidant and a rival of Donald Trump, will have some outside help in his effort to win the Republican primary.Allies of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey have formed a super PAC to support him in the nascent Republican primary, as he makes preparations for a likely campaign kickoff in the next two weeks, according to an official with the group and others briefed on the matter.Mr. Christie’s candidacy is likely to to focus in part on drawing a stark contrast with former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Christie supported Mr. Trump in 2016 and worked with him during his presidency, but they split over Mr. Trump’s claims on election night in 2020 that the race was stolen from him.People who have been close to Mr. Christie for years are leading the outside group, Tell It Like It Is, which is laying the groundwork for an imminent announcement, one of the people briefed on the matter said. Brian Jones, an aide who advised Senator John McCain’s presidential bid in 2008 and Mitt Romney’s in 2012, will run the effort.William P. Palatucci, a longtime adviser to Mr. Christie and a Republican National Committee member, will be the chair. Another long-serving adviser to Mr. Christie, Russ Schriefer, will oversee messaging as a senior adviser; and Brent Seaborn, a veteran data guru, will focus on voter targeting. Maria Comella, an adviser who also was chief of staff to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Mike DuHaime, Mr. Christie’s top political strategist in 2016, are expected to run an eventual campaign if Mr. Christie announces as expected. Anthony Scaramucci, the hedge fund adviser who served for less than two weeks as a communications director in the Trump White House and has become a vocal Trump critic, has said he will support Mr. Christie if he runs. Mr. Christie “is willing to confront the hard truths that currently threaten the future of the Republican Party,” Mr. Jones said in a statement. “Now more than ever we need leaders that have the courage to say not what we want to hear but what we need to hear.”Chris Christie is focusing his effort in the 2024 race on New Hampshire, where he held a town hall recently at New England College.Charles Krupa/Associated PressMr. Christie has said recently that he would run if he believed he could win, but he had indicated that there were organizational issues he needed to figure out. The existence of the super PAC and the pending announcement suggest those issues have been resolved.A Christie candidacy is seen as a long shot in a Republican Party that has been remade in Mr. Trump’s image eight years after Mr. Christie first ran for president. Mr. Trump vanquished him, and Mr. Christie dropped out after coming in sixth in New Hampshire, where he had staked his candidacy.A central challenge of this campaign will be explaining to voters his transformation. He endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016, helped him with debate prep and acted at times as an informal adviser during his presidency. Then, in the earliest hours of Nov. 4, 2020, Mr. Christie split with him when he questioned Mr. Trump’s declaration that there had been widespread fraud in the election.“We heard nothing today about any evidence,” Mr. Christie said in an appearance on ABC News. “This kind of thing, all it does is inflame without informing. And we cannot permit inflammation without information.”Since then, Mr. Christie has become a full-throated critic of Mr. Trump, talking as a former federal prosecutor about the former president’s legal travails and describing him as a loser who can no longer command the crowds he once did. Mr. Christie’s candidacy is being watched by donors who either like what he’s saying or see him as the best opportunity to damage Mr. Trump, particularly from a debate stage. And like some other candidates, such as former Vice President Mike Pence, Mr. Christie appears to be banking on the notion that there are enough vestiges of the old Republican Party to which he can appeal.While New Hampshire is seen as a potentially favorable state where Mr. Christie could make inroads, his advisers are not expected to hang his candidacy on a specific state. Instead, he is expected to try to get as much media attention as possible with an unconventional campaign that will travel to places where his message is most appealing.He will be coming into the 2024 race as the person with the most coherent case against Mr. Trump while arguing that the fight needs to be taken directly to the former president. Mr. Christie is hoping to tamp down some of the grievance that has seeped into the roots of political discourse in the Republican Party since Mr. Trump became the party’s nominee in 2016. Mr. Christie is approaching the race, allies say, with the goal of delivering a hopeful message. But Mr. Christie has also repeatedly taken shots at Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the distant second to Mr. Trump in most public polls, describing Mr. DeSantis’s fight with Disney in particular as an overreach. “Where are we headed here now that, if you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you? To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did. And now all of a sudden here we are participating in this with a Republican governor,” Mr. Christie said last month. More

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      Chris Christie, Glenn Youngkin, Chris Sununu: Who Can Save the G.O.P. in 2024?

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      At this point, it seems a little gratuitous to pick at the scab of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s not-so-dazzling presidential campaign opening. Let us just stipulate that when your long-anticipated announcement jump-starts #DeSaster trending on social media, things could have gone better.The feeble rollout wouldn’t much matter if the Florida governor were otherwise dominating the Republican primary race, or even holding steady. But he isn’t. Slipping poll numbers, questionable policy moves, the people skills of a Roomba — his multiplying red flags have landed the Republican Party in the odd position of having not one but two problematic front-runners: its original MAGA king and the lead runner in its Anyone But Trump lane.So where does the race go from here? Most likely nowhere new, unless someone steps up with a fresh approach to the Trump problem. Because so far, the pack of pretenders to Donald Trump’s throne reeks of weakness. And nothing delights the MAGA king more than curb-stomping the weak.A presidential field without a strong front-runner invariably invites a pile-in of challengers. Every Tim, Nikki and Vivek — and Asa, Doug, Larry, Mike, etc. — surveys the scene and thinks: Heck yeah, why not me? Why not, indeed. Given the topsy-turvy state of the political terrain, is it really much more ridiculous for Vivek Ramaswamy, the upstart tech entrepreneur, to think he has a shot at the nomination than for Mike Pence to? No rampaging MAGA mob has ever brayed for his hanging, so in some regards, he has a critical edge on the former vice president.A host of seasoned politicians, along with characters no one has ever heard of, are out there right now poring over the results of test polls and focus groups, talking with players in Iowa and New Hampshire, huddling with big donors and strategists. Fueling the frenzy, twitchy donors are casting about for a more promising champion than Mr. DeSantis, pressuring their favorite white knights to join the tournament. Listen closely and you can hear the phones chirping in the offices of popular Republican governors such as Chris Sununu, Glenn Youngkin and Brian Kemp.Even as the mass of pretenders to Mr. Trump’s throne grows, the energy from the field remains stubbornly subdued. The pretenders have adopted a stance of nonaggression, an unwillingness to come hard at the MAGA king. The reasoning behind this is no secret. The former president feeds on conflict like a vampire on virgins. But the result is a collection of challengers trying to sell beta-male energy to a voting base hooked on outrage, machismo and blood lust.The whole vibe of the Republican contest feels increasingly passive-aggressive, with the pretenders giving Mr. Trump the side eye as they throw varying degrees of shade. The most direct (like Asa Hutchinson) somberly discuss the former president’s character flaws and lament that his antidemocratic behavior has disqualified himself from high office. Far more often, the candidates lard their electoral pitches with veiled criticisms about how governing is about more than salty tweets or how the presidency isn’t about building a personal brand — all while avoiding Mr. Trump’s name, of course.Even Mr. DeSantis, who fancies himself a fighter, won’t risk a full-frontal assault. His people have said he plans to be strategic with his criticisms — more shiv than sledgehammer. How cool. How strategic. But you know what happens when someone takes a sledgehammer to a shiv, right?If Republicans are serious about dislodging Mr. Trump, this race needs a jolt. Soon. No one knows exactly what might do the trick, but those weary of groveling before him would do well to start experimenting — for the sake of the party more than even their own ambitions. At the very least, someone needs to climb into the ring with the willingness and disposition to throw a direct punch. Metaphorically, of course.Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has been making noises as if he wants to be that guy. In a recent interview with Politico, he vowed that if he runs, he will tackle Mr. Trump’s weaknesses head-on, from the character troubles to the record of losing. (So much losing.) “I don’t believe that Republican voters penalize people who criticize Trump,” he asserted.To pull this off, Mr. Christie would need to go all in on his no-nonsense, in-your-face, Jersey tough-guy shtick — the one where he yells at people to sit down and shut up — and quash the sycophantic streak that had him smooching Mr. Trump’s backside for years. If he could go bully-a-bully with the former president, things could get interesting for the first time in forever. In 2016, no Republicans went hard at Mr. Trump because no one took him seriously. This time, most are too afraid of him. They are still hoping to find some magical way to woo his voters without his noticing or fighting back.Good luck with that.This race needs a brawler in the mix — if not Mr. Christie, then someone else with that inclination.Omar Little, the drug-dealer-robbing philosopher on “The Wire,” once observed, “You come at the king, you best not miss.” But if everyone is too chicken — excuse me, too strategic — to seriously come at the king at all, how can anyone expect a regime change?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More