Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is mulling a run for the Republican presidential nomination. He told Hugh Hewitt today that he would make a decision on that in the next couple of weeks. Beyond that, he took a number of shots at former president Donald Trump, a few of which are going to leave a mark. I don’t think, however, that he helps either himself or the more important cause of nominating a candidate who can beat the Democratic ticket by saying things about Trump that aren’t true — especially when there is an embarrassment of riches that he’d be justified in citing.
Christie expressed doubt that Trump cares about the country. There’s certainly a case to be made for that after the former president’s appalling post-2020-election performance. Rhetorically, moreover, this is consistent with the argument that a narcissist cares only about himself, which is entirely fair and to be expected from Trump’s opponents.
Christie also said that Trump essentially bungled the relationship with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. Trump’s China record was a mixed bag, but on balance (as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo argued in our pages in 2021) the Trump administration reoriented American policy away from heedless engagement and toward the recognition of Beijing as a profound geopolitical threat. Still, there were, as Christie says, “failures,” and stressing them is fair game.
What I find strange is this Christie assertion: “How can we expect [Trump] to do any better with Putin than having set the groundwork for the invasion of Ukraine, which his conduct towards Putin certainly helped to establish?”
What?
I was as chagrined as anyone by Trump’s rhetorical blandishments toward Putin. But to suggest that Trump is complicit in the missteps that led to the invasion of Ukraine is ridiculous.
Since Putin’s reign began, Trump’s is the only American presidency during which Russia did not invade and seize territory in other countries. As far as Ukraine specifically is concerned, Trump should not, of course, have pressured Kyiv to investigate the Bidens, much less used U.S. military aid as leverage in that effort. Yet the fact remains that Trump provided the kinds of lethal aid to Ukrainian forces in combat with Moscow that the Obama administration would not. Furthermore, Putin did not menacingly surround Ukraine until after Biden’s provocatively reckless Afghanistan pullout, and he did not actually invade until after Biden signaled that the West would not put up much, if any, resistance to a “minor incursion.” None of that can be laid at Trump’s feet.
If Christie wants to argue that Trump is ill-suited to manage the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion and the balancing act of aiding Ukraine while avoiding the war’s expansion, that’s fine — and it’s consistent with the rap on Trump’s impulsiveness, inattention to detail, and so on. But Trump is in no way responsible for Putin’s invasion, and when he says it would not have happened if he were still president, there are good reasons to believe that might have been true — not least of which is that Trump’s subordinates rightly regard the Kremlin as hostile, while Biden cultivated the Kremlin to help him try to renew the Iran nuclear deal.
More to the point, Christie’s Trump–Ukraine blunder undermines a key part of the GOP 2024 campaign: Biden’s incompetence, singularly, has made the world far more unstable, and in so doing has harmed America’s standing and interests.
Christie is right that Trump should show up for candidate debates if he wants to be the nominee. Whether he does or doesn’t, there is plenty of ammo to fire at Trump that is true and disqualifying. It’s puzzling that Christie would lead with something against which Trump has a solid defense — i.e., something that would likely help Trump make his case rather than highlight his unfitness.