Speaker 1: 2024.
Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie is continuing to pound Trump, and Trump is
obviously scared, and Trump doesn't seem to want to get on a debate stage with Chris Christie
now.
Donald Trump has already been laying the groundwork for some time to skip the first Republican
presidential primary debate, which will be August 23rd on Fox News, moderated by Bret
Beyer, I believe Bret Beyer and Martha MACCALLUM.
Chris Christie's approach has been to go directly after Donald Trump.
I believe it is the right approach because the 2024 Republican primary is essentially
Trump.
Yes or no.
However, it is not really helping Chris Christie very much, who still is polling below 3%.
And there may not be anything Chris Christie can do.
In a sense.
Chris Christie's campaign may be dead on arrival, but to the extent that the other candidates
aren't willing to actually point out what the real problem is in the Republican Party,
the real problem is that it has become the MAGA party.
That's really the problem for the Republican Party.
We can go.
If they went back to the policies of George W Bush and Ronald Reagan and George H.W.
Bush.
We could say, oh, we disagree with those policies.
But the problem is that's not even really what Republicans are about right now because
they've been taken over by MAGA.
So Chris Christie is going to go down with the ship most likely, but he is going to go
down with the ship of.
I'm going to point to the biggest problem for our party right now, which is Trump.
Chris Christie is now doing a really good job of taunting Trump about actually showing
up and debating.
And I will talk in a moment about how I think such a debate would go if Trump and Christie
got on the same debate stage.
But here is Chris Christie speaking yesterday morning to George STEPHANOPOULOS on ABC's
This Week.
This clip from the account Accountable GOP, which does a great job of pulling these clips.
Speaker 3: Come on, Donald.
Get on the stage and defend your record.
You know, if you want to be the nominee, you need to defend your record.
Yes, he has a record four years as president where he didn't deliver on a lot of issues
that Republicans care deeply about.
He didn't repeal and replace Obamacare like he said he would if they had a Republican
Congress.
He he said he's going to balance the budget.
He added 6 trillion to the national debt.
I said he's going to build the wall.
Mexico.
He would build 47 miles of new wall.
You know, George, at that pace, in four years, he needed 110 years as president to be able
to finish the wall.
Speaker 1: Well, and many Trump supporters would gladly give him the 110 years if he
lived that long.
But that's a story for a different day.
Trump doesn't like this.
And we're going to see a clip of Trump continuing to suggest he's going to skip the debate and
we will talk about why.
Let's look at one more Chris Christie clip in this one.
Chris Christie says when Trump says he believes he won in 2020, he doesn't actually believe
that he won.
It's just something that he's saying.
It's part of the grift.
Speaker 2: We also learned that former top White House officials, including Jared Kushner,
have been called before the January six grand jury.
Kushner reportedly told the grand jury that Trump sincerely believed that he won.
What do you make of that, number one, and what do you make of the fact that Smith has
reached that deep into the Trump White House?
Speaker 3: Well, first off, it shows that Jackson was running a serious investigation,
and that's what he should be doing, because the American people are owed at least that
much by someone who has the authority that Jackson has.
And if you're going to bring charges related to January 6th, you'd better be right.
And you better have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a jury is going to be able to understand.
And that's unimpeachable as far as you know, what's going on with Donald Trump in terms
of these charges.
The fact is that he doesn't believe he won.
He was concerned before the election that he was losing.
And I know that because he said it to me directly.
Mm hmm.
So, you know, he knows he didn't win, but his ego, George, won't permit him to believe
that he's the only person in America outside the state of Delaware to ever have lost to
Joe Biden.
And so his ego is running that.
And am I surprised that Jared Kushner would say that he doesn't want to be disinvited
to Thanksgiving?
George?
So he said what he needed to say.
Speaker 1: So, listen, I know that there are still people who write to me and they say,
but Chris Christie defended Trump for years.
And you're right.
And that's going to play into the dynamics if they do get on a stage together.
But let's now go to what Donald Trump said to Maria BARTIROMO.
Trump continuing to suggest to her in an unhinged interview that we'll look at in more detail
later.
He is strongly looking at not participating.
Speaker 4: I want to begin with the state of play of this election, with now the election
over a year away and the first GOP primary debate a month or so away.
Will you be on that stage?
Are you participating in the upcoming debate?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's a quite an easy question normally.
Ronald Reagan didn't do it and a lot of other people didn't do it.
When you have a big lead, you don't do it.
Speaker 1: Remember, they were incumbents running for reelection.
Trump is not currently the president.
Speaker 2: And we have a lead of 50 and 60 points in some cases.
And some of these people are zero run to Sanctus as I call them, or just sanctimonious is down
to.
He's in the teens now and I'm at 50 and 60 and 65 and even I saw one today at 70 and
see leading people by 50 and 60 points and you say, why would you be doing a debate?
It's actually not fair.
Why would you let somebody that said zero or one or two or three, you know, be pumping
you with questions.
Speaker 1: Popping you with questions.
Now, of course, you can't.
You wouldn't make the debate stage if you were at zero.
In fact, requirements to be in GOP primary debate.
I think it was 40,000.
Yeah.
So it's candidate must reach at least 1% in three national polls or at least two national
polls and two from early voting states, as well as 40,000 individual donors.
I believe in just 35 days or no, some candidates did it in 35 days, but you have to have 40,000
individual donors.
Forget for a second about who you like on policy.
Just put that aside for a second.
On the one hand, if Trump and Christie get on the same debate stage, Trump is going to
be receiving a drubbing from Chris Christie.
That would be absolutely wild because Chris Christie has a lot of ammunition.
Now, you might say, David, last time they were both on the stage together in 2015, 2016,
it wasn't a drubbing.
Christie did nothing.
He got no attention except for his Marco Rubio viral moment.
It didn't happen last time.
There are very different circumstances now with Trump's not only failures, but Trump's
anti-democratic actions over the last several years.
And Chris Christie would absolutely beat him over the head with it, and it wouldn't be
good for Trump.
But Trump does have a retort.
The problem is that Trump's retort doesn't make him look particularly good.
It makes Christie look bad, but it doesn't make Trump look particularly good.
And Trump's retort when Chris Christie slams him is, Well, Chris, you supported everything
I did for four years, endorsed me and stood behind me until you decided you wanted attention
for yourself, which you're getting by running for president.
You're the loser.
Chris.
That will likely play very well with MAGA audiences as soon as Christie slams Trump.
Trump goes, Not what you said to me for years, Chris.
You're just doing this for attention because you're desperate or whatever.
I don't know.
On balance, who comes out ahead with that?
Christie would be very effective at going after Trump in these Republican debates, but
Trump does have that retort whether he would be smart enough to use it, whether he would
be prepared to use it, I don't know.
But I hope Trump does participate, not only to feed my genuine curiosity about how much
of a disaster it will be, but because you should participate if you're running, if you
if you want to show you're serious, make if your argument is the ones and twos aren't
serious.
But I am, you should be there to show how serious you are and how much better your policy
ideas are and how much better you are at that stage presence.
So I hope that is there.
I
don't know
if you
will be