Hang In There, Chris

America needs Chris Christie to stay in the race.

(Photo by Sophie Park/Getty Images)

A scene from the twilight of the DeSantis candidacy:

NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard: “If Trump is found guilty and wins the nomination, would you stand by him at the convention?”

DeSantis: (walks away without answering.)

Happy Thursday.

On the eve of the January 6 Insurrection, let’s catch up for a moment, shall we?

• Did the FBI instigate Jan. 6? 25% of Americans believe so, poll finds - The Washington Post

The poll includes this wholly predictable tidbit:

The Post-UMD poll finds 39 percent of Americans who say Fox News is their primary news source believe the FBI organized and encouraged the Jan. 6 attack, compared with 16 percent of CNN or MSNBC viewers and 13 percent who get most of their news from ABC, CBS or NBC. The poll finds 44 percent of those who voted for Trump say the FBI instigated the attack.

• Biden opens 2024 campaign push with planned speech ahead of January 6 anniversary - CNN Politics

• Trump Asks Supreme Court to Keep Him on Colorado Ballot - The New York Times

And, ICYMI:

• DeSantis, Haley pledge to pardon Trump if he’s convicted - Wapo

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Hang in there, Chris

As recently as two weeks ago, I didn’t think this is what I’d be writing, but here we are — stuck in our post-reality reality.

As a survivor of 2016 PTSD, I understand the importance of “consolidation.” A crowded field only helps Trump and from the pundit-class horse-race point-of view, it makes sense for anybody who is not in second place to drop out. Now.

In this fantasy scenario, Nikki Haley finishes second in Iowa (which terminates the already-dead DeSantis campaign) and rolls into New Hampshire, with a chance to take on Trump one-on-one. A recent poll put her within four points (!) of the Orange God King in the Granite State. If you add Chris Christie’s support to her column, she might have an actual shot at beating Trump which then creates a tsunami of momentum that propels her to…

What?

Folks, I regret to tell you that this is an exercise in unicorn-watching. And we all know that.

Some observers got tingles up their legs a few days ago when Haley moved into second place ahead of the flaccid Florda governor. You can see the trend lines here on the Five Thirty-Eight average. But look at the top line.

Spoiler alert: Trump is romping.

And then there is Nikki herself. She has had some strong debates; her position on Ukraine is solid; and the world would be a substantially better, warmer, safer place if she could dethrone Trump and lead us into the brightly lit uplands of normalcy.

But as she has reminded us in the last few days, she is not the one we have been waiting for.

This brings us back to the unlikeliest champion. The last truth-teller standing. And I know how bizarre that might sound to some of you, because it sounds bizarre to me too.

Back in 2021, I wrote this about him:

First a confession: I was once a fan of Chris Christie’s distinctive brand of porcine pugilism. Over the years, he refined his in-your-face bullying style into a kind of performance art. And, in another life, I was very much there for it.

But that was before he turned himself into Trump’s hostage-cum-shine-box-flunky. You remember the scene:

(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

Back then, I imagined what a conversation with Christie might be like. I thought it would probably go something like this: (LANGUAGE WARNING.)

“Governor Christie, thanks for coming today.

“Fuck you, and everything you did, you pathetic fucking sell-out. What the fuck did you think would happen? What the fuck were you doing standing there like a total asshat? Aren’t you embarrassed?”

But having vented, I’d say:

“I’m listening, and I’m going to watch.”

Well, that was then, and I have been watching. And for all his sins (and they are legion), Chris Christie has been a magnificent beast.

Here is how he is framing the choice at the moment:

Who do we want to be as a country? 

Many of us feel like we don't have anywhere to go, but the only choice is pitting us against one another. 

The country I choose: One with love in our hearts for every American — differences are a strength, not a weakness; where the President cares more about you than he does about himself. 

Donald Trump: he will sell the soul of this country.

I'm not perfect. I made mistakes. But I always tell you the truth. 

New Hampshire, it's up to you. 

In today’s GOP it is radically countercultural to admit errors or apologize for mistakes. Humility is for cucks. So what Christie is doing here is vanishingly rare:

"Eight years ago when I decided to endorse Donald Trump for president, I did it because he was winning, and I did it because I thought I could make him a better candidate and a better president," Christie says in the ad, speaking directly to the camera.

"Well, I was wrong, I made a mistake," he says.

Look, the guy is not going to win. He’s not going to be the nominee. But sometimes lost causes are the ones worth fighting for. The smart kids will roll their eyes at this, but the term “quixotic’ has not always been considered a pejorative. Sometimes we need to tilt at windmills. We especially need to tilt at this one.

I concede that, in terms of realpolitik, the case for Christie’s departure is quite strong. As my colleague Will Saletan has pointed out, Christie’s blunt truth-telling is toxic to his political standing in the GOP. In that sense, Haley’s cowardice, prevarication, and pandering are all smart politics.

"Unlike Christie, [Haley] can attract enough Trump-sympathetic voters" to win NH because "she doesn’t tell them what they don’t want to hear."

"In other words, Christie is right. She’s a coward. The political case for Haley is the moral case against her."

But as A.B. Stoddard wrote the other day, “Dropping out to clear the field would mean supporting a candidate he knows is going to lose to Trump anyway, and who refuses to tell that truth.”

So this raises an ancillary question: What is a pundit to do? Don the mantle of the political consultant/strategist, and go with the smart-money play? Pretend that this is actually a horse-race whose outcome is still unknown?

Or say to hell with that: If we’re going to go down in a fireball, let’s do it raging to the end.

For the moment, at least, Christie isn’t going anywhere. WATCH:

Some people say I should drop out of this race. Really?

I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar. 

He pits Americans against each other. 

His Christmas message to anyone who disagrees with him - “ROT IN HELL.” 

He caused a riot on Capitol Hill. He’ll burn America to the ground to help himself.

Every Republican leader says that in private. I’m the only one saying it in public. 

What kind of President do we want? A liar, or someone who has the guts to tell the truth?

New Hampshire. It’s up to you.

I’m Chris Christie and you bet I approve this message.

Dammmmm.

So contra some of my colleagues, I think Christie should stay in the race, at least for now.

Because America needs all the truth-tellers it can get.

Even if you don’t like them.

 

Over at the Dispatch, Nick Catoggio also has some thoughts on the former NJ governor.

If Trump loses next fall, I suspect his defeat will owe more to Chris Christie than to Nikki Haley.

Which seems counterintuitive. If hard feelings on the right over the primary linger into November, typically we attribute them to divisions between the nominee and his top challenger. That’s Haley. Christie is a nonfactor in the race.

No one expects Haley to lead any sort of principled resistance to Trump, though. She’ll endorse him quickly after dropping out, not wanting to squander the goodwill she earned with Republican voters this cycle ahead of 2028. Most of her supporters will turn out for him in November with her enthusiastic encouragement.

It’s Christie’s voters who are going to be doing some deep thinking about the general election.

There can be no accommodation with Trump or with his Republican enablers. That’s his message. That’s why he’s refused to quit the race. It seems to have resonated with the 10 percent or so of GOP voters who still view him favorably.

Ten percent is a big share in a country where presidential elections lately tend to be decided by a few thousand votes across a few battleground states.

It wouldn’t shock me if Chris Christie ended his political career this summer by endorsing Joe Biden at the Democratic convention, giving his primary supporters one last nudge about the stakes of the coming election. He, more than any other figure, created a permission structure for “normie” Republicans to support Trump when he made his endorsement in 2016. Supporting Biden this year would be a bookend to that, offering a permission structure for the anti-Trump rump on the right to refuse to support him this time.

Until then, his decision to stick around in the GOP primary rather than yield to the sane but cowardly Haley can be read as a signal to those voters about how they should approach the coming election. “No” to Trump—and “no” to a party establishment that knows better but is willing to serve him anyway. Christie might matter more than Haley in the end.

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Susan Glasser: The Fever Won't Break

On Wednesday’s pod, The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser joined me to preview 2024 and the matchup between Biden and Trump.

You can listen to the whole thing here. Or watch us on YouTube.

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Quick Hits

1. The Return of Trump’s Big Lie

Kim Wehle in today’s Bulwark:

ON TUESDAY, DONALD TRUMP’S LAWYERS filed his final brief in support of his attempt to convince a federal appeals court that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for actions that he took during his term in office, including any criminal actions relating to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. The lies packed into this brief should carry sanctions for the attorneys whose names appear on the front page.

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2. McConnell’s Two Big Legacies: The End of Roe and the Forever Grip of Trump

Jill Lawrence in the Bulwark:

Just after the trial ended, McConnell gave a blistering speech calling Trump “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the January 6th violence, vandalism, fear, and disruption; blaming the House for not moving fast enough; and telling the country that “impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice”—that criminal and civil courts could still hold Trump accountable.

THOSE WORDS RING HOLLOW TODAY, as Trump generates delays designed to push his four criminal trials into late 2024, 2025, or even 2026, and states wrestle with whether to keep him off their 2024 primary ballots due to the Fourteenth Amendment ban on candidates who took oaths to support the Constitution then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same” or gave “aid or comfort” to its enemies. There’s a bipartisan contingent arguing for disqualification and another bipartisan group convinced that would be too divisive, voters should decide, or Trump has not been convicted of anything . . . yet.

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3. In Ukraine, Hardship and Hope

Cathy Young in this morning’s Bulwark:

BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY, THE ACCLAIMED and controversial French public intellectual and filmmaker, is releasing his third documentary about the war in Ukraine: Glory to the Heroes, a follow-up to the second film in the trilogy titled Slava Ukraini or “Glory to Ukraine.” (The exchange Slava Ukraini!—Heroyam slava! is the patriotic Ukrainian greeting that dates back to the independence movement of 1917–1921.) There is both a poignancy and an urgency about its release at a time when conventional wisdom in the West doubts the chances of Ukrainian victory and promotes the narrative of war fatigue and pessimism among both Ukrainians and their Western allies.

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Cheap Shots

Party over country, amirite?

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