In a column posted earlier today, I posed the question: Does Chris Christie want to be remembered as the guy who saved Donald Trump? The answer he has now given is: No!
In a town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday evening, Christie announced he was dropping out of the race. Things got awkward, with him being recorded on a hot mic before the event predicting that Nikki Haley was “gonna get smoked” by Donald Trump and saying “she’s not up to this.”
But once he took the stage, in his official remarks he stated that he did not see a path to the nomination for himself and that he did not want to “enable” a Trump nomination as he did in 2016 by decapitating Senator Marco Rubio in New Hampshire and then endorsing Trump. This was the honorable thing to do.
Christie sought redemption on this campaign for his prior support for Trump, being the candidate willing to state unequivocally that Trump is unfit for office while his rivals for the nomination tiptoed around criticizing the former president. But with a few recent polls finding that Haley was within single digits of Trump in New Hampshire and Christie still pulling 10–12 percent, the pressure was growing for him to exit the race. Right now, however remote, the most plausible scenario in which Trump is not the nominee involves Haley consolidating the support of anti-Trump voters in New Hampshire. That would have been much harder with Christie in the race.
Haley could still very well “get smoked,” as Christie suggested in an unscripted moment. But if she does, he can still argue that he did everything he could to prevent a Trump nomination. He warned of the dangers of Trump being the nominee and of a potential second term — and then he dropped out to make more room for Haley. If Trump still wins, nobody can reasonably argue that Christie helped make that a reality.