Don’t Buy Chris Christie’s Whitewash of His Early, Selfish Decision to Jump on the Trump Train

Cheriss May, Sipa via AP Images

Chris Christie has a well-rehearsed story that he’s all too happy to share when his 2016 endorsement of Donald Trump is raised, one he repeated during an interview with Semafor’s Steve Clemons on Tuesday.

“In America, we don’t get to vote for who we want to vote for, we get to vote for who’s left,” explained Christie patiently. “I made the decision that I didn’t want Hillary Clinton to be the president of the United States. You can agree or disagree with that, but my only choices were those two and let me say this, it’s not like I supported him from the beginning. I ran against him!”

“It wasn’t the choice I wanted, but if you’re gonna participate in democracy, you gotta make a choice,” he continued.

But Christie’s professed memory of the genesis of his support for Trump fails him. Christie did not endorse Trump only after he secured the Republican nomination, he worked to help Trump secure that nomination early in the primary process.

As of February 25, 2016 — the day that Christie endorsed Trump in a speech during which he declared that “there is no one who is better prepared to provide America with the strong leadership that it needs, both at home and around the world, than Donald Trump” — only four primary contests had been held. Trump had won three of them.

Christie’s endorsement wasn’t an acknowledgment of Trump’s inevitable victory, it was an effort to curry favor with him in advance of his likely victory.

The gamble didn’t pay off. Christie was passed up in the veepstakes for Indiana Governor Mike Pence — who endorsed Ted Cruz more than two months after Christie threw his support behind Trump — and never did land a senior position in Trump’s abnormally transient administration.

The real story behind Christie’s endorsement of Trump is a hard truth for a prospective Republican candidate presenting himself as uniquely suited to confront the former president is difficult to face, but to do so would be more admirable than to paper over it with a false narrative.

For his 2016 campaign slogan, Christie chose “Telling It Like It Is.” Time and time again, he’s proven incapable of living up to that ideal when doing so would imperil his own, far-fetched designs on higher office. That’s just one in a long line of damning indictments of his judgment.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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