‘I’m not a paid assassin’: Inside Chris Christie’s 2024 decision

A few weeks ago, Chris Christie called up a former Republican presidential candidate and asked for some advice: Should he mount a second presidential run in 2024 — facing off against former President Donald Trump for a second time — or was the idea just plain crazy?

Taking down the most dominant Republican political figure in a generation, the 60-year-old former two-term New Jersey governor has calculated, requires taking direct aim at Trump’s weaknesses — his questionable character, his lack of discipline and, most of all, his losing record.

The ex-candidate, whom Christie wouldn’t name, offered a blunt and encouraging reply: “No one else has the balls to do it.”

Nothing that’s transpired since has undermined that assessment. Watching from the sidelines, Christie has been exasperated as Trump’s top-tier challengers skirt direct confrontation. Former Vice President Mike Pence and ex-U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley have simply refused to speak Trump’s name, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has offered only tepid pushback to his incessant attacks.

Christie, on the other hand, loves nothing more than throwing a political punch. Trump, he told Playbook, “can’t be a credible figure on the world stage; he can’t be a credible figure interacting with Congress; he will get nothing done.” He’s recently extended his attacks to DeSantis, dismissing him as not ready for prime time.

It became perfectly clear over the course of a nearly hour-long interview that Christie is itching to launch a campaign — not only is he gleefully throwing haymakers to reporters, he’s already hosted one New Hampshire town hall this year and will host another Thursday. But as he mulls whether to make it official in the coming weeks, he says his decision comes down to: Can I actually win?

It’s an odd question to dwell on, first, because there’s an obvious answer: His 2016 campaign made more stops in the Granite State than any other campaign, and he still managed only sixth place in the first-in-the-nation primary, ending his bid. This time around, with an even more MAGA-fied electorate, no national poll of Republican voters has found him with more than 3 percent support.

Second, there’s a clear rationale for Christie 2024 that has nothing to do with him actually winning the nomination: Some Republicans are openly rooting to have Christie on GOP debate stages later this year simply to bludgeon Trump — that is, do the dirty work that DeSantis, Pence, Haley and others haven’t so far been willing to do.

But Christie insists he’s not interested in that.

“I’m not a paid assassin,” he said, adding, “When you're waking up for your 45th morning at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester, you better think you can win, because that walk from the bed to the shower, if you don’t think you can win, it’s hard.”

Still, he’s thinking about it — and, yes, the current field’s lack of testicular fortitude is on his mind.

Trump’s vulnerability “needs to be called out and it needs to be called out by somebody who knows him,” he said. “Nobody knows Donald Trump better than I do.”

Three prerequisites

While sipping tea at the Hay-Adams on Monday, Christie laid out his three prerequisites for running. First, have something to say. Second, have your life in good enough shape to handle months on the road away from your family and hundreds of phone calls begging for money.

Christie said he has no reservations on either count. Now an ABC News commentator, he’s as practiced as ever in getting his points across, and his March town hall in Manchester showed at least a baseline level of public interest in his message.

On a personal level, Christie thinks he’s in a better position to run this time around than eight years ago. His kids — some of whom were in middle and high school when he last ran — are now grown, meaning his wife of 37 years, Mary Pat, can travel with him instead of staying back home with the kids.

Mary Pat, he said, is encouraging him to run and is actually looking forward to a campaign. She joined Christie in D.C. this week for meetings, traveled with him Wednesday to a Lincoln Day dinner in Fort Wayne, Ind., and will be in New Hampshire with him tonight.

It’s the third prerequisite — have a path to victory — where Christie hasn’t quite convinced himself.

He’s been calling donors to see if they’d finance him, asking old allies if they’d back him and political strategists if they’d advise him. Earlier this week, he gathered 40 members of his political alumni network in Washington to discuss a potential campaign.

Christie admits the response he’s gotten has been mixed. About 40 percent are “skeptical,” he said, saying things like, “Come on, Chris, really?” The other 60 percent, he said, see a path: “The fact that it’s a mix is encouraging.”

In any case, he suggested he might be ready to go by faith, if not by sight.

“I had someone ask me yesterday on one of these phone calls, ‘Well, explain to me the exact path that gets you there.’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t,’” Christie said. “And anybody who says they can is completely full of it, you know? Explain the Donald Trump path in 2016. Who had that one predicted? Not even Trump.”

A different kind of campaign

Christie said he’ll make a final decision by mid-May, and if it’s a go, he knows exactly how he’ll do it.

First off: No more obsessing over “lanes.” Christie said it was a “strategic mistake” in 2016 for GOP candidates to focus on beating competitors with similar ideological views rather than stopping Trump from running away with the nomination. And he sees a similar dynamic happening now, with lower-tier candidates going after each other instead of the flawed front-runner.

Christie said he’s also ready to defy the conventional wisdom in Republican politics that, to beat Trump, GOP candidates have to market themselves a Trump without the drama — which means not criticizing him directly.

“I don’t believe that Republican voters penalize people who criticize Trump,” he said, adding: “If you think you’re a better person to be president than Donald Trump, then you better make that case.”

Christie said Trump offers a “bountiful buffet” of vulnerabilities that candidates can and should exploit. Republicans, for example, should be reminding voters of Trump’s “disqualifying” call in December for the “termination” of the Constitution over his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

They should also be skewering Trump’s character, he said, particularly over the allegations at the center of his recent criminal indictment in Manhattan: A scheme to buy the silence of a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump.

DeSantis, of course, tried that recently by responding to questions about Trump’s potential arrest with a sly quip: “I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of affair.” But DeSantis later backtracked, publicly defending Trump after the indictment came down.

Christie said DeSantis’ gibe was “way too subtle” to sink in with voters: “Oh, so that's supposed to prove to me that you're tough enough to take on Donald Trump? This is a guy who said Ted Cruz's wife was ugly. Like, you think he cares that you made a little sideswipe at him?”

And DeSantis’ post-indictment 180 — which followed a similar reversal on controversial comments minimizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” — further illustrated why the Florida governor is in over his head, Christie said. “The minute he gets criticized about something, he winds up saying the exact opposite.”

Christie, meanwhile, says he’s fully prepared — after prosecuting dozens of corrupt local officials as a U.S. attorney, battling public employee unions and fending off multiple investigations as governor, mounting a pugnacious presidential campaign and enduring a famously complicated relationship with the Trump family — for the rough and tumble should he get in the race.

Asked about Trump taunting him over his low poll numbers at an RNC donor retreat in Nashville this weekend, he chuckled: “Being taunted by Donald Trump, it bothers some people. To me, it’s a compliment.”