Former New Jersey Governor and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie appeared on an episode of the “Hacks on Tap” podcast to offer advice to President Biden on how to beat former President Trump in the upcoming debate.
Christie, a one-time Trump ally who was one of the former president’s most vocal critics during the primaries, told podcast hosts David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, and Republican consultant Mike Murphy that he would now give Biden the same advice he gave to Trump before the 2020 presidential debates.
“This is the same advice I gave to Trump four years ago, and he didn’t follow it.” Christy said. “So I said, ‘Let Biden talk. If you let him talk, he’ll hang himself.’ And of course he did the exact opposite and lost the debate.”
Christie said he would tell Biden to do the same this time around.
“I don’t care how upset you are about how wrong what he’s saying about your history, your family, yourself is. You’re better off not getting involved because you’re going to lose that battle,” he said.
Christie argued that if Biden lets Trump speak, voters will ask, “Can’t he just shut up?” Biden doesn’t need to say that explicitly, as he did in the 2020 debates, and that people watching should draw their own conclusions, he argued.
Biden and Trump are scheduled to debate on June 27 and September 29. It will be the first debate between the two since the 2020 presidential election, after Trump skipped the primary debates.
Tensions are running high around the debate, with Trump, currently in the final stages of a hush-money criminal trial, potentially becoming the first former US president to be convicted, and Biden losing support from his base over his actions over Israel’s war with Hamas.
Analysts expect the election to be as close as the 2020 presidential election, and the early debates will give the candidates a chance to fend off attacks from each other and lay out their plans for a second term in office.
Christie said he thinks Biden should highlight three or four of his best qualities as president and “emphasize them over and over and over again.”
He advised Biden to act as if he was having a conversation with the moderator, rather than a debate with Trump.
“If Trump looks like an angry guy standing on a fence yelling at his neighbor, you look like a guy on a lawnmower with AirPods in his ears, driving around in his car, waving every now and again as he goes by and not giving a damn,” Christie said.
“There are two reasons: One, you want to highlight how crazy Trump is. And two, you’re Biden. You don’t want to go too far, because you’ll fail,” he continued.
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