Our Ari Blaff reports that former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is expected to announce his entry into the 2024 Republican presidential primary, perhaps as soon as next week.
As mentioned on the most recent edition of the Editors podcast, I’ve heard a rumor about Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis that I don’t find plausible, but I figure is worth discussing, because if I’ve heard it, it means other people are hearing it, and it’s floating around out there. The gist is that Christie was supposed to be Donald Trump’s attorney general, but Jared Kushner squashed that idea, as Christie prosecuted Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, for tax evasion and witness intimidation. The recent rumor is that Christie will enter this year’s GOP presidential primary, spend the overwhelming majority of his time attacking Donald Trump, and then, if DeSantis wins the presidency, Christie will become attorney general in the DeSantis administration.
That kind of quiet deal isn’t farfetched at all, and Christie, a former federal prosecutor, is the kind of figure who would be on any Republican president’s short list for attorney general.
But one of the reasons I find that rumor implausible is that if Christie is in a secret alliance with DeSantis, he’s doing a masterful job of hiding it.
“I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative based on his actions towards Disney.”
“For him to have taken that action against Disney and to not have foreseen that Disney was going to do what they did in response which was to completely take over the millions and millions acres and the zoning decisions before they got the authority, I’ll tell you this much: That’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi and negotiating our next agreement with China or sitting across from Putin and trying to resolve what’s happening in Ukraine,” Christie explained. “If you can’t see around a corner that Bob Iger created for you, I don’t think that’s very imposing.”
The ex-New Jersey governor argued that “sometimes in politics you just have to admit when you screwed up and you got taken.”
“Now [DeSantis is] doubling down,” Christie added. “Why do you want to punish a place that creates enormous tax revenue for your state, enormous tourism for your state? And you want to punish them because they disagreed with you?”
If the rumor were true, you could envision DeSantis grumbling, “You’re playing the role of my critic a little too well.” With secret allies like this, who needs enemies?