Chris Christie can't be serious

On memory-holing.

(Chris Christie, left)

Chris Christie had a remarkable exchange about former president Donald Trump with an attendee of an event in New Hampshire earlier this week.

Here it is:

Audience Member: “I’m glad to hear you standing up against Trump, [but] when the results came in, you jumped ship on us.”

Christie: “Let me explain. Let me explain 2016 to you. I’ll be honest with you. We all made a strategic error … I stayed with him in 2016 because I didn't want Hillary Clinton to be president…None of us knew what kind of president he really would be or not.”

Audience Member: “I did.”

BRUTAL.

Also, true!

Christie, who is apparently considering another run for president in 2024 (it won’t work), is in the midst of a rewriting of history the likes of which we haven’t seen since, well, Donald Trump and the 2020 election. This is some epic memory-holing.

Let’s revisit some facts, shall we?

Christie ran for president in 2016, one of the many establishment figures vanquished by Trump on his way to the nomination.

During the primary campaign, Christ went at Trump aggressively. “I just don’t think that he’s suited to be president of the United States,” he told Fox News of the billionaire businessman. “I don’t think his temperament is suited for that and I don’t think his experience is.”

Christie ended his campaign shortly after finishing 6th in the New Hampshire primary where he had spent the vast majority of his time and resources.

Two weeks after dropping out, Christie shocked the political world by endorsing Trump’s candidacy.

“Donald Trump is someone who when he makes a promise, he keeps it,” Christie said at the time. “No one is going to get inside this guy's head. There is no better fighter than Donald Trump.”

Christie also noted that he had known Trump for a very long time and that the two men had worked together effectively in the past. (As the New Yorker’s David Remnick wrote in a profile of Christie: “Christie has been Trump’s friend, dinner companion, and adviser for two decades.”)

Days later, as Trump celebrated his Super Tuesday victories at a press conference, Christie turned into a meme of subservience and befuddlement.

Despite that mockery, Christie stood by Trump — all the way through the 2016 election. Christie was rewarded with a job as the head of the presidential transition — until Trump dumped him in favor of Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

(Christie later said he was fired as head of the transition because he objected to Mike Flynn being named national security adviser.)

Despite all of that, Christie was defending Trump as recently as 2019 — over the impeachment of the president for his conduct in regards Ukraine.

“I suspect that this is not the first time than an American president has used American foreign aid in an attempt to get a foreign country to do something that the American government wanted them to do,” Christie said at the time.

And even in his book — “Republican Rescue,” which came out in mid-November 2021 — Christie is largely praiseworthy of Trump, according to Remnick.

Wrote Remnick: “Christie is a canny narrator. He maintains over-all fealty to Trump, but wants you to know that he understands what kind of human being Trump is.”

It’s that last point that makes Christie’s latest attempt at blamelessness over Trump utterly laughable.

With the possible exception of Rudy Giuliani (and we know how that one turned out!), there was no national political figure who knew Trump better than Christie knew him.

The notion then that Christie could never have predicted what sort of president Trump would be is fantastical.

Trump had made a name for himself — in New York and nationally — as a free-wheeling businessman more than willing to bend the rules and the truth to get what he wanted.

Trump had been involved in more than 4,000 (not a typo!) lawsuits in his life. He had declared bankruptcy 6 times. There was a very long paper trail pointing to systemic corruption in Trump’s business dealings.

And, forget all that! Because the campaign Trump ran in 2016 made VERY clear how he would act as president.

There was his pronouncement in his announcement speech that Mexico was purposely sending criminals over the border. “They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists,” Trump insisted, without a shred of proof.

He proposed a ban on Muslims entering the country. He suggested Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He talked about the size of his genitals on a debate stage. He said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose supporters. He refused to say whether he would accept the 2016 election results.

(Sidebar: Christie has tried to hang his latest break from Trump on the former president’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results. Which is hilarious given that Trump didn’t even want to accept the 2016 results — in an election he won!)

Despite repeated promises to be “so presidential you will be so bored,” Trump repeatedly returned to his vitriolic self on the campaign trail.

And then, just in case you forgot, just weeks before the election came the revelation of his lewd and misogynistic comments about women — as recorded in an “Access Hollywood” interview.

In short: It was (and is) impossible for anyone paying even loose attention to the 2016 presidential race to not know what you were getting in supporting and voting for Donald Trump.

And Christie wasn’t just some onlooker. He was in the campaign’s inner circle! He was a guy who, by his own account, had known Trump for decades and taken his measure!

Christie’s latest attempt to rewrite the history of his relationship with Trump is the product of pure political convenience. He wants to be an anti-Trump voice in the party and is tailoring his version of history to fit that narrative.

Watching Christie twist in the wind — again — I am reminded of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous words: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”