Media mogul Rupert Murdoch reacted Wednesday afternoon to speculation that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would drop out the 2016 GOP primary by referring to the Garden State executive as a “suicide bomber.”
After Christie’s poor showing Tuesday evening in the New Hampshire primary, the governor told reporters he’d head back home to mull over his options. Many in the press took his announcement as a signal that the Republican governor is ready to call it quits.
The announcement came just days after the governor went hard after Sen. Marco Rubio in a primary debate Saturday evening. Christie accused the senator of being too scripted, and highlighted the fact that Rubio repeatedly accuses the president of knowing “exactly what he’s doing,” and that everything that the commander in chief has done in the last seven years has been by design.
Rubio then came in fifth place in New Hampshire, and many think that it has something to do with the beating he took from Christie this weekend. But Christie came in sixth place, leading some in media to suggest that while he damaged Rubio in the debate, it did the governor’s presidential campaign no favors.
“Chris Christie, suicide bomber,” Murdoch said in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.
Murdoch is not alone in suggesting that the New Jersey governor hurt both Rubio and himself with his debate performance Saturday evening. Conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer said as much Tuesday evening on Fox News as he discussed the results of the New Hampshire primary.
“[T]he most interesting element is, the one event in the debate, the hit that was put on Rubio by Christie, who incidentally appears not to have been helped,” he said. “It was something like a suicide attack. But the others have been helped. But the one who’s helped the most is Trump, because now you have a muddle among the so-called mainstream lane. It’s easier to see four of them, three of them, possibly four proceeding. And as we saw, with the late deciders, Rubio won them in Iowa, which gave him a strong kick, but he lost them in New Hampshire, lost by eight points to [Ohio Gov. John Kasich].”
