Chris Christie campaigning in Iowa in 2016
Next Wednesday, August 23, the Republican National Committee (RNC) of the Republican Party will host its first 2024 presidential primary debate, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. To qualify for the debate, candidates need to meet three requirements:
–First, candidates must attract at least 40,000 unique donors, with at least 200 unique donors per state. Less popular GOP candidates have used gift card offers, concert tickets and more to reach the threshold.
–Second, candidates must score at least 1% in three national polls that meet the RNC’s requirements, or at least 1% in two national polls and in two polls from separate early voting states.
–Finally, candidates must sign the RNC’s pledge to back the eventual Republican nominee, no matter who wins the primary.
Thus far, the Republican candidates who state that they have met these requirements for the first debate (it remains to be seen whether and to what extent the RNC will seek to verify these claims) are Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Doug Burgum, and Tim Scott. Several more familiar names — front-runner Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Chris Christie — say they have met the first two requirements but have not yet signed the pledge to support the eventual nominee. However, Donald Trump signed such pledge in 2016 but then, in front of the cameras for the world to see, refused to honor that pledge in one of the debates. Obviously, the Republican Party gave Trump special treatment to break the rules then, and can be expected to do so this time as well. It is also possible that additional candidates will meet the debate requirements.
In previous Republican debates involving Donald Trump, his rivals typically withered in the face of Trump’s bullying tactics, including interruptions, name-calling, and insults. This time around, it is difficult to expect something different, with one large exception: Chris Christie announced his candidacy in June by saying that he would take on Trump directly, and thus far he has done so. For example, in a revealing PBS “Firing Line” interview on June 9, Christie said the following about Trump:
He said he was going to repeal and replace Obamacare. He didn’t do it, even with the Republican Congress. He said he was going to build a wall across the entire border and Mexico was going to pay for it. He not only didn’t build the wall, we haven’t gotten our first peso from Mexico. He said he was going to balance the budget in four years. He left with the highest deficit of any president in modern history. Said he was going to retire the national debt in eight years. He’s added trillions to the national debt. There is a record here, well beyond his character flaws, a record of failure as president.
Likewise, in the PBS interview, Christie talked about Trump’s behavior — much of it leading to criminal indictments — surrounding his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, and Trump’s subsequent conduct:
When you’re the president of the United States and you say the election was stolen when you have no evidence to prove that it was, you are undercutting the very democracy that gave you the privilege and the honor of being president…. And January 6th. He sat by watching it on TV and did nothing for hours. And then finally, the way he’s conducted himself in the post-presidency. His conduct with classified documents. And not just having them…. I believe that he intentionally kept those documents and obstructed the government from getting them back and returning them to the people, and protecting our national security secrets.
As to those Trump investigations and indictments, Christie had this to say in his interview, which was taped just before U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith handed down a 37-count indictment against Trump (which was later supplemented with even more counts):
The fact is, he’s a private citizen. And if Jack Smith has evidence that he believes proves the president’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, he has no choice but to bring that case, because that’s the oath he’s taken.
As we saw in Georgia last night, the criminal indictments against Trump for his 2024 election coup attempt keep coming. Therefore, the big question is whether Christie will attack Trump so directly and forcefully in person on all these matters during next week’s debate. If so, then there are certain to be fireworks, and the media and interested viewers will no doubt have a lot to say in the following days. What is still uncertain is whether such attacks by Christie would be enough to take down Trump, or even hurt Trump substantially in the polls. Thus far, even 91 criminal indictments have failed to do so.
Photo by Alex Hanson, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/x5ClKg
