New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie thinks fellow Republican candidates Donald Trump and Jeb Bush have become so consumed by their incessant feud, they’ve begun to neglect who they’re running to serve.
“I think what these two gentleman have forgotten is this isn’t about them. It’s about the American people,” Christie said Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead.”
Bush and Trump have been hurling punches at one another for weeks on the campaign trail, each trying to belittle the other with clever attack ads and carefully crafted insults. Hours after the former Florida governor released his first TV ad Tuesday containing a thinly veiled attempt to brand Trump as a “self-promoter,” the billionaire retaliated with a video advertising Bush’s “low energy” temperament as a cure for insomnia.
“These guys are just throwing school-yard insults,” Christie said in reaction. “We don’t care if they don’t like each other. We don’t care if they respect each other.”
“We should be talking about the problems of the American people [and] that’s not what they’re doing,” he added.
Christie himself is no stranger to attack politics. His shouting match with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over the issue of government surveillance was one of the most memorable moments during the first Republican debate and their squabble spilled over into the weeks that followed.
In separate interviews prior to the debate, the Garden State governor called Paul “disgraceful” and accused him of “politicizing America’s national security.”
Christie may oppose Bush and Trump’s antics, but both candidates have continued to perform significantly better than him in national polls.
Trump became the first Republican hopeful to top 30 percent support among GOP voters nationwide in a CNN/ORC poll released Thursday. And Bush, while trailing far behind the New York businessman, currently leads Christie by 7 percentage points in the same poll.
