Chris Christy, a Republican presidential candidate and former governor of New Jersey, came under fire from Fox News personality Kayleigh McEnany for what she called a losing campaign plan.
Despite their unprecedented focus on the former president, who has been indicted numerous times, including for an alleged crime — mishandling classified documents — that President Biden himself has been accused of committing, Christie, a former federal prosecutor who frequently criticizes her onetime boss, Donald Trump, has been praising the Biden Justice Department and the FBI.
McEnany claimed on a portion of “Outnumbered” that Christie’s recent defense of FBI Director Christopher Wray won’t win over many Republicans, let alone Trump supporters.
Wray testified before a House committee earlier in the 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 accomplished some good deeds, but said that he had failed to address many of the problems that exist today.
“There’s a lot of questions for him — this ‘radical traditionalist Catholic’ memo which he rescinded, he said he was ‘aghast’ by it.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
When Fox News host Bill Hemmer lauded former President Trump’s record on immigration in June, Christie became irritated.
Hemmer began a part of an interview on “America’s Newsroom” by remarking that Trump is “crushing it” in the polls, which prompted him to inquire as to whether or not people genuinely desire a Trump rival in the Republican primary. Hemmer’s initial admiration of Trump infuriated Christie, who has made it clear that he is a “Trump critic.”
Christie ignored Trump and focused on Vice President Joe Biden instead. Hemmer then brought up the border as a result, and Christie concurred 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.
