Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie warned Republicans that former President Donald Trump will be preoccupied with his legal battles if he becomes the presidential nominee, posing a threat of serious consequences for the party.

Christie, a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday that Trump will be in a courtroom for “six to eight weeks depending upon the length of the defense case” and not on “the campaign trail making the case against Joe Biden, which is what Republicans should be doing every day.”

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A federal judge overseeing a criminal case against Trump for allegations of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election set the trial date for March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday and in the middle of the presidential race.

Christie, who once supported and advised the former president, has become one of the biggest Trump critics on the campaign trail. He emphasized that someone facing multiple criminal cases “can’t be a viable fall election candidate against Joe Biden.”

“And if we lose to Joe Biden, Republicans need to understand that we're gonna be looking at a packed Supreme Court,” Christie warned of the outcome of a Democratic president. “We're gonna be looking at the end of the filibuster and a number of other issues that folks like me and the rest of the folks in our party can't have.”

Positioning himself as a candidate who can defeat President Joe Biden, Christie said he was “the only one on this stage that's ever defeated a Democratic incumbent in an election, and I did it in a very blue state,” referring to the first GOP primary debate of the 2024 election cycle on Wednesday. Christie was one of two out of the eight candidates on the debate stage who said they wouldn’t support Trump as the Republican nominee if he were convicted.

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“So that's why I'm the guy who could beat Joe Biden, and this trial date for Donald Trump just makes it even clearer that he cannot be our nominee. If he is, we're going to lose the election,” Christie said.

Trump and Christie have feuded in their early campaigns for the 2024 presidential race. In a post to Truth Social on Monday, Trump urged his former ally to drop out of the presidential race, warning his candidacy harms the Republican Party.