Chris Christie slams DeSantis for ‘playing games’ with voters over Trump indictment

Chris Christie slammed Ron DeSantis Monday for “playing games” with Donald Trump supporters to win their votes.

Christie, who is challenging DeSantis, Trump and others to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, said the Florida governor and other contenders are buying time until Trump implodes — then they’d swoop in to get his supporters.

“They’re playing games,” Christie said at a town hall meeting broadcast on CNN. ‘Look, you all need to know this. They’ll play political games with you… and then implode a little trump and leave: you’re more likely to vote for me.”

Christie has attacked DeSantis before, most notably before the Florida governor’s war with Disney, saying DeSantis’ actions showed he was not a conservative.

DeSantis has given Trump an underhanded defense in light of his federal charges. Speaking to Republicans in North Carolina over the weekend, he drew on his experience as a Navy attorney and pondered what the Navy would have done had he brought classified documents: “I would have been court-martialed in New York in a minute.”

He also said he didn’t understand why Trump was being charged, but Hillary Clinton was not charged for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

“Is there any other benchmark for a Democratic secretary of state than for a former Republican president?” he asked. “I think there should be one standard of justice in this country. Let’s impose it on everyone and make sure we all know the rules.’

Christie announced last week that he would be running for the presidential nomination. He ran in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, but dropped out when he failed to win the New Hampshire primary.

Currently, he is barely 1 percent in the polls RealClearPolitics Poll Average on the 2024 Republican nomination, behind DeSantis by more than 20 points and Trump by more than 50.

Christie, the former New Jersey governor who got his start as a federal prosecutor, came out swinging during his town hall on CNN, moderated by Anderson Cooper.

He said Trump acted on his federal indictment because he was furious that he lost to Joe Biden and predicted the former president would face trial this winter on the 37 federal charges related to his possession of classified documents.

“He’s angry and vindictive,” Christie said.

“I am confident that if he goes back to the White House, the next four years will be one of settling the scores.”

Ron DeSantis subtly defended Donald Trump when he spoke at the North Carolina Republican convention in Greensboro

Chris Christie talks to Donald Trump on the 2016 debate stage in Manchester, NH, while Marco Rubio stands on the left

Chris Christie talks to supporters last week at a town hall-style event at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College

Christie was close to Trump at one point. He was considered for the role of White House Chief of Staff, which he did not get, and helped prepare for his presidential debates with Joe Biden throughout 2020.

Christie also predicted more would come out of the federal indictment against Trump. The 49-page indictment alleges that Trump deliberately lied to the Justice Department, got his lawyers to agree to his plan, and even bragged about having documents he knew he shouldn’t have.

Of the 37 charges against Trump, 31 involve classified and highly classified secret documents he kept after leaving the White House in early 2021.

“He’s putting our country through this voluntarily,” he said of Trump.

“It’s a very tight, very detailed, evidence-laden indictment,” Christie said. “There is definitely a lot more to come. As a prosecutor, you never put all your cards on the table for trial. So there’s a lot more to come.’

Christie, who served as a U.S. attorney from January 17, 2002, to December 1, 2008, described it as a “talking indictment.”

“Remember, if you’re the prosecutor, you can’t go beyond what’s in the four corners of that document. So I think so [special counsel] Jack Smith understood that people would need a full explanation if you are going to press charges against the former president of the United States. And I think he was right,” he said.

So that’s a lot more detailed than you’d see in the typical indictment. But don’t be fooled either. There’s a lot more information to come when they go to court, in particular I think there will be a lot of witnesses who actually worked for Donald Trump who will now testify against him,” he predicted.

Christie also berated Trump for saying the classified documents he took to Mar-a-Lago belonged to him. Under the Presidential Records Act, the records of any presidential administration are the property of the federal government.

‘He says: I am more important than the country. These are my papers. You saw in the indictment that his employees were afraid. His boxes. His boxes. He wants his boxes near him. He flew the boxes to New Jersey for summer vacation. What is this, as if they are a relative? Seriously, I need my boxes with me,’ he said.

“This is vanity running wild, ego running wild,” he said.

He went on to say of Trump, “He can’t live with the fact that he lost to Joe Biden. He can’t live with it. And look, I saw how Joe Biden performed, I would also be pretty bummed if I lost to Joe Biden. But the fact is that he did. And he wants to continue pretending to be president. He wants the trappings of the presidency around him.”