‘I Don’t Think Ron DeSantis Is a Conservative’: Chris Christie Attacks Prospective 2024 Rival Over Disney Fight

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie slammed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis during an event with Semafor’s Steve Clemons on Tuesday, going so far as to muse that he doesn’t view his prospective 2024 Republican primary rival as a conservative.

Christie seemed to relish the opportunity to launch a broadside after Clemon raised the topic of DeSantis and his ongoing fight with Disney:

So let’s start off with this: I’m a conservative. And I believe as a conservative, the job of government is in the main to stay out of the business of business. Like I don’t think we should be heavily regulating business, I don’t think we should be telling business what to do, what to say, how to think. And I believe that’s what conservatives have believed for as long as I’ve been alive.

I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative, based on his actions towards Disney. I mean, you know, where are we headed here now that if you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you? To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did. And now all of a sudden, here we are participating in this with a Republican governor.

Christie went on to say that he was “all for the appropriate use of governmental power to achieve laudable goals,” but to knock DeSantis as lacking in foresight.

“If you’re gonna use those levers [of power] you gotta look around the corners to see what the result of that will be,” argued Christie.

For him [DeSantis] to have taken the action he took against Disney and to not have foreseen that Disney was going to do what they did in response which was to completely take over the millions and millions of acres and the zoning decisions of that before they got the authority, well I’ll tell ya this much: That’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi and negotiating our next agreement with China. or sitting across from Putin and trying to resolve what’s happening in Ukraine, if you can’t see around a corner Bob Iger created for you.

Christie is mulling a second run for the Republican nomination for president after an unsuccessful 2016 bid culminated in his endorsement of former president Donald Trump in late February. Since the 2020 presidential election and Trump’s repeated attempt to overturn it, Christie has been a vocal critic of his ex-ally, although he’s continued to defend his decision to endorse Trump early in the 2016 primary process.

Watch above via Semafor.