The New Hampshire Republican presidential primary will be held on January 23, 2024, and the GOP’s Iowa presidential caucuses are five days away, but former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is abandoning the contest.
Some speculated that the move was intended to give former U.N. ambassador Nimarata Haley a stronger chance to beat the party’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, but ahead of his announcement, Christie was heard on a microphone — apparently without realizing it — that Haley was “gonna get smoked.”
Christie also said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Trump rival, had called him and was “petrified.”
“I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win,” Christie said during the public portion of the town hall event in New Hampshire where he announced he was suspending his campaign, which he called “the right thing for me to do.”
“Because I want to promise you this: I am going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again — and that’s more important than my own personal ambition,” Christie said. “So we have to decide now, we have to decide in the next 10 months who we want to be as a country.”
“It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path to me to win the nomination which is why I’m suspending my campaign tonight for president of the United States,” Christie said.
The erstwhile presidential candidate’s decision to drop out was lampooned in the Onion, which said “he was ready for the next chapter of his humiliation.”
Under pressure due to poor poll numbers and lack of support, the former New Jersey governor has ended his flailing bid for the Republican nomination.
Christie was among the first 2016 Republican contenders to surrender to Trump, only to see his May 2016 selection as chairman of the transition team evaporate shortly after Election Day, in a power play orchestrated by the president-elect’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose father he had sent to prison.
As an ex-Trump ally, Christie sought to position himself as the only Republican contender willing to go toe-to-toe with his former boss but he had the support of just 2 percent of Republicans in a nationwide Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Tuesday – the same level of support as former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who never declared herself a candidate.
Christie left the governor’s office with just 15 percent approval ratings.
Christie has been a staple on cable news shows offering withering critiques of Trump, calling the pugnacious former president unfit for office, and arguing that he was morally responsible for the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
“Chris Christie is running for president because the truth matters. We need to speak the truth,” claimed ads advocating the one-time US Attorney for New Jersey and .