Chris Sununu says Chris Christie candidacy at a ‘dead end’ and only benefits Trump
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu nudged Chris Christie to drop out of the 2024 presidential contest, reasoning that the only one who wants him to stay in the race is Donald Trump.
“He knows his voters who want to see Trump defeated are all coming over to Nikki Haley,” Sununu told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
“In fact the only person who wants Chris Christie to stay in the race is Donald Trump. Think about the irony of that.”
Sununu, a popular Republican governor in the Granite State, endorsed former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for president earlier this month.
Christie has positioned himself as the Trump attack dog in the 2024 GOP arena and has essentially bet his presidential campaign on a strong performance in New Hampshire.
Haley has averaged second place in New Hampshire with 24.8% support, while Trump remains solidly in first at 46.3%.Christie lags behind in distant third at 10.5%, per the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polling.
“The events of the last few days fully solidifies the point that Christie has been making for six months. That the truth matters and if you can’t answer the easy questions you can’t fix the big problems,” a Christie spokesperson told The Post in response to an inquiry about Sununu’s jab.
Given Christie’s polling in New Hampshire, some critics like Sununu have argued he should end his campaign to consolidate his anti-Trump voters behind Haley.
Christie recently cut an ad pushing back against that notion.
“Some people say I should drop out of this race. Really? I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar,” Christie said. “What kind of president do we want, a liar or someone who has the guts to tell the truth?”
Sununu has been vocally critical of Trump, and even considered mounting a campaign of his own before determining that a crowded primary would benefit the 45th president.
“Chris Christie is a friend. But his race is at an absolute dead end,” Sununu told CNN. “Chris is only talking about Trump. That’s it, he’s kind of a one-man show.”
“And I know he says he wants to stay in the race to speak the truth about Trump, but that translating to votes in a primary is a very different thing and he’s hit a ceiling.”
Sununu’s slight against Christie came while he was responding to the former New Jersey governor knocking Haley as slippery, saying, “she’s unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth.”
Christie’s criticism of Haley was over a gaffe at a town hall event in Berlin, N.H., in which she declined to fault slavery for causing the Civil War. She has since clarified that it “was about slavery.”
“She cleared it up quickly, right?” Sununu said about the flub. “Obviously, if something needs to be cleared up a bit, you know you wish you had said it a little differently the first time, but it was quickly cleared up.”
The first GOP contest is slated to take place on Jan. 15, 2024, in the Iowa caucuses. New Hampshire’s GOP primary is set for Jan. 23, 2024.
