This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.
Nothing gets Chris Christie going like eviscerating his opponents. A bully through-and-through, he was nonetheless celebrated in some corners as the most credible NeverTrumper in a Republican Party otherwise petrified of getting on the wrong side of the former President. So when the tough-talking Christie was caught on a spectacular and (maybe?) accidental hot-mic moment Wednesday night, no one was necessarily surprised, and some definitely wondered if the former New Jersey Governor and U.S. Attorney knew exactly what he was doing in his final moments as a White House contender.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
After all, it’s not like Christie was all that more diplomatic when he was on stage, bitterly ending the presidential bid in which he had framed himself as the only truth-teller left in the Trump-era GOP, an approach that had relegated him to a political afterthought.
“Anybody unwilling to say Trump is unfit to be President is unfit themselves to be President,” Christie said on stage in New Hampshire, a state where he had planned to build a firewall as a credible hiccup to Trump’s inevitable march to a third nomination in eight years. But backstage, Christie was even more blunt.
On former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley: “She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it. She’s not up to this.”
On current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “Petrified.”
None of this is particularly laudatory. Nor was any of Christie’s diagnosis incorrect, especially given what audiences were subjected to a time zone away in Iowa, where CNN hosted the last two most serious non-Donald Trump contenders in a head-to-head debate. (Tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy failed to qualify for the main stage, so he recorded podcast clips. Trump had his own counterprogramming on Fox News and heads into the lead-off caucuses on Monday having never faced any real debate efforts.)
Christie is a masterful bully, perhaps without peer in modern U.S. politics. Sure, his chief nemesis can get louder, meaner, more petty. But when it comes to throwing well-footnoted shade against rivals of either party, no one can match Christie. Whereas the likes of archetype abusers Roy Cohn and Roger Stone bludgeoned enemies with hate or dodgy truths, Christie doesn’t much need to reach beyond the facts as they are apparent. The skilled prosecutor, even in retreat, can badger his targets without compromising his own integrity.
In that, with reluctant admiration from across the political spectrum, observers watched as Christie’s second bid for the White House came to a hobbled end, just hours before two of his better-polling rivals arrived on a snow-laden campus in Iowa for their last debate before that state’s lead-off caucuses.
“His way is not my way,” Haley said. “I don’t have vengeance, I don’t have vendettas. I don’t take things personally. For me it’s very much about no drama. No whining. And getting results and getting them done.”
DeSantis shot back: “The number of people who will be amnestied when I am President in this county will be zero.”
You could almost see Christie rolling his eyes as he contemplated how he had managed to run a less-viable challenge to Trump than these two. And so maybe he decided to make sure voters knew exactly what he thought, beyond what he felt was appropriate to include in his concession speech. Even in exiting, Christie showed he was willing to light the fuel tank and see what happened next. With Haley and DeSantis skittish around even a spark, they might be proving Christie correct—and paving the way for Trump’s return to power, if not in the White House at least as the representation of what it means to be a Republican in 2024.
Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.