To get a sense of how hard reporters in Washington are struggling to kneecap Ron DeSantis ahead of his expected presidential campaign, consider that they’ve rolled in Chris Christie to attack the Florida governor.

Was no one else available? Perhaps a Republican who people outside of D.C. remember?

Politico on Thursday published a tedious interview with Christie, who, for non-historians, was once the governor of New Jersey, and gave him XXL space to share his thoughts on how inadequate DeSantis is as a challenger to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Earlier this week, the news site Semafor hosted Christie for a live-stream interview, during which he criticized DeSantis for his efforts to strip Disney of its weird status allowing it to function in Florida as a separate civic entity.

Christie has not worked as an elected official in more than five years. When he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, his support among primary voters maxed out at less than 5 percent. Even Marco Rubio, the person who, to this day, Christie brags about supposedly knocking out of the race, managed to get up to 20 percent. (The debate moment that he’s credited with securing Rubio’s doom was humiliatingly referred to as a “kamikaze” mission.) And let’s not forget Christie’s most notable contribution of late — apologizing over and over again for almost dying from Covid. He literally went on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” gave an interview to The New York Times, and wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal to lecture everyone about how “wrong” it was for him to attend a White House event without a face mask. He’s that pathetic.

There are few people less relevant in general, let alone relating to the 2024 presidential election, than Chris Christie. But the media need something to report regarding DeSantis, and they’re otherwise left describing his sustained popularity in Florida or turning out another inconsequential article quoting random Democrats and unnamed Republicans who don’t like him.

Tough choice for reporters in Washington.

Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of "Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone."