Chris Christy, a Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey governor, was criticized by Fox News personality Kayleigh McEnany for his “losing campaign strategy.”
Despite their unprecedented focus on the former president, who has been indicted multiple times, including for an alleged crime — mishandling classified documents — that President Biden has been accused of committing, Christie, a former federal prosecutor who frequently criticizes her former boss, Donald Trump, has praised the Biden Justice Department and the FBI.
McEnany stated on “Outnumbered” that Christie’s recent defense of FBI Director Christopher Wray will not win over many Republicans, much less Trump supporters.
Wray testified before a House committee earlier that day, and Christie stated on Fox News, “I did recommend him to President Trump, and I’m proud that I did.”
“Those things they’re talking about today, and the director made this point over and over again, are all things from when Jim Comey, Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch were in charge of the Justice Department — before he got put in charge,” Christie said. “He fired the entire Comey leadership team out of the FBI, they’re all gone.”
“Is it all fixed? Of course, it’s not all fixed. Jim Comey and Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch drastically harmed the Department of Justice and the FBI. And Chris Wray has now spent years fixing that,” Christie added. “What you saw today was an animated and combative FBI director who is defending the men and women who work for him… and do a great job…”
He added: “So yeah, I think Chris Wray has done a very good job, and I think a lot of the stuff you see today is theater, people trying to raise money for campaigns.”
After the clip had finished, McEnany commented:
“Best of luck to Chris Christie with that message in a GOP primary, which has tremendous distrust for the FBI,” she said.
She acknowledged that Wray had improved the FBI and performed some positive actions, but stated that he had failed to address the majority of the current problems.
“There’s a lot of questions for him — this ‘radical traditionalist Catholic’ memo which he rescinded, he said he was ‘aghast’ by it. But yet he won’t allow the authors of that before Congress,” she added.
“None of this instills confidence in the American people, many of whom have distrust for the FBI.”
.@kayleighmcenany on Chris Christie's inexplicable defense of corrupt FBI Director Chris Wray: "Best of luck to Chris Christie with that message in a GOP primary, which has tremendous distrust for the FBI…" pic.twitter.com/Gq8tnp23oj
— Kevin Tober (@KevinTober94) July 12, 2023
In June, when Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer praised former President Trump’s immigration record, Chris Christie became agitated.
Hemmer began a portion of an interview on “America’s Newsroom” by stating that Trump is “crushing it” in the surveys, which prompted him to inquire as to whether or not Republican primary voters truly desire a Trump opponent. Christie was infuriated by Hemmer’s initial admiration of Trump; he has made it plain that he is a “Trump critic.”
Christie disregarded Trump and instead focused on Vice President Joe Biden. As a consequence, Hemmer brought up the frontier, and Christie agreed that “the border is ridiculous.”
Hemmer stated that at that time, Trump’s policies “did much better on everything that you just mentioned.”
“Wait a second, Bill. His policies did not do better at the border. Not true,” Christie retorted. “Remember what he promised in 2016? He was going to build a wall across the entire border in the first four years, and Mexico was going to pay for it. We got a wall that’s about a quarter of the way done, and Mexico hasn’t given us one peso yet.
“So Donald Trump in 2016 was the guy who had no record, so he couldn’t be examined in a very specific way. He now said he was going to do that with immigration. And by the way, he had Congress for the first two years fully controlled by the Republicans. Not one change in the immigration laws,” he said.