Chris Christie Needs America To Be Gullible
The self-styled truth-teller is launching a presidential campaign on the premise that Americans are too simple-minded to see that he’s a liar.
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If you’re already subscribed, thanks for coming back. Today’s article is a look at Chris Christie, who’s set to launch his 2024 presidential campaign today.
You can’t help but be impressed by the sheer audacity of Chris Christie running for president on the message that “the truth matters.” Let’s just say that Christie and the truth have not always been on the best of terms, and so it’s a bold move for him to make this the beating heart of his campaign. On some level, you’ve got to hand it to the guy.
But on another level, you absolutely do not have to hand it to him. Christie has built his political career atop the premise that he can lie without consequence so long as he adopts the persona of a give-it-to-em-straight truth-teller. His presidential campaign, scheduled to launch later today, is based on the idea that us yokels will be gullible enough to fall for this ruse one last time.
Christie’s strained relationship with the truth goes back decades. In fact, his first election victory in 1994 was thanks in part to a lie. At the time, Christie was running for a county office and claimed in a direct-to-camera television ad that his opponent was under investigation by the local prosecutor. It wasn’t true. And yet the campaign spent $40,000 — a significant sum for the time — painting his opponent as a criminal and himself as an ethical angel. After the election, Christie was sued for libel, lost, and had to issue an apology in the local newspaper.
This origin story is quaint compared to some of the whoppers that Christie would tell over his next thirty years in politics. There was, for instance, the time that Christie fabricated a friendship with the King of Jordan so that he could exploit a loophole in campaign finance law and accept $30,000 worth of gifts from the monarch. Then there was “Beachgate,” when Christie closed New Jersey beaches because of a state government shutdown, went out to the beach with his family anyways, and then told a reporter that he “didn’t get any sun today.” Unfortunately for Christie, another reporter had snapped aerial photos of him lounging on the beach. In that deer-in-the-headlights moment, what did Christie do? He dispatched his spokesman to say that he hadn’t technically lied about getting sun because “he had a baseball hat on.”
Don’t let the magnitude of these examples give the impression that Christie only tells occasional and comically large lies. No, Christie lies about everything big and small. He’s lied about his record on abortion, education policy, Supreme Court nominations, gun control, pension reform, and everything else besides.
Even this track record doesn’t fully capture Christie’s lack of integrity. The man is at his most dishonest not when he’s telling outright lies, but when he’s simply doing whatever it takes to get his foot on the next rung up the ladder of power.
The most vivid example is Christie’s relationship with Donald Trump. Over the past eight years, Christie has flip-flopped too many times to count. At the outset of the 2016 primary, he called Trump “a good guy.” But once the primary heated up, Trump’s behavior was “not worthy of someone running for president of the United States.” After it became clear that Christie wouldn’t be the nominee, he endorsed Trump in the GOP primary and lavished him with praise. Then he helped prep Trump for the debates against Hillary Clinton. Once Trump won the 2016 election, Christie briefly led his transition team and then stuck by the president through the next four years. In 2020, Christie helped Trump prepare for the debates against Joe Biden even after Trump refused to commit to the peaceful transfer of power. When did Christie finally change his mind about Trump? Ah yes. After Biden won the election and Trump was no longer a power source that Christie could feed off.
For Christie, personal ambition always comes first. The moral and ethical implications are always an afterthought. When it was tactical to support Trump, he supported him. When it was tactical to oppose him, he opposed him.
I understand that this is not altogether unique in the world of politics. But Christie distinguishes himself with the frequency and intensity of his lies. And what makes Christie’s track record of lies especially galling is that he continues to pitch himself as a bold truth-teller. His 2016 campaign slogan was “telling it like it is,” and his website called him “the only candidate willing to tell you the whole story.”
Today, Christie is set to launch yet another campaign based on the idea that he’s a defender of truth and honesty. "I'm going to go out there and tell the truth. Like the truth matters. The truth is not negotiable," Christie told Axios earlier this year. The subtext to all this talk about truth, of course, is that Christie thinks Trump is a liar and that there’s an anti-Trump lane for him to exploit.
The frustrating thing is that I agree with Christie on this point. Trump is a liar, and he does deserve to be called out. But Christie is the very last person I want doing the calling out. Christie may have the right message, but he couldn’t be a worse messenger.
Unfortunately for Christie, Americans are not buying what he is selling — and they haven’t been for a long, long time. In 2016, Republican primary voters heartily rejected Christie. In 2017, at the end of his term as governor, Christie had a 15% approval rating, making him the least popular governor in New Jersey history (his response to these poll numbers: “who cares?”). Now, just 21% of Republicans say they view him favorably.
And yet, despite the abundant evidence indicating otherwise, Christie still believes that America has an appetite for what he has to offer. He’s somehow convinced himself that Americans won’t be able to see that he’s little more than a chronic liar pretending to be a bold truth-teller.
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As a NewJersayan, I can testify to this article on Christie's character. He has no more morals than Trump or the other MAGA syncophants.
"The self-styled truth-teller is launching a presidential campaign on the premise that Americans are too simple-minded to see that he’s a liar."
And since that is undoubtedly correct, he will rake in a lot of launderable dough, which is the real puprose of his "campaign".