Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) criticized Republican senators, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), for defending Donald Trump’s recent comments about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). “Everyone is on bended knee” to the former president, he said.
Christie, a former Trump supporter who ran in the primary against Trump as one of the only candidates to criticize the former president until he resigned last month, joined the podcast “Pod Save America” this week and said that this He said it was “typical” of conservative politicians. He comes to Trump’s defense after the 2024 front-runner said he would openly encourage Russian aggression against NATO allies that have fallen behind on defense spending.
“This is typical of what everyone on the Hill, almost everyone, is doing, and as Trump himself said when talking about Tom Emmer, ‘Everyone is on bended knee.’ is” Christie said on the podcast.. “And that’s what Marco Rubio is doing.”
Rubio on Sunday dismissed Trump’s comments and said he was confident the former president knew what he would do regarding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if re-elected.
President Trump has expressed concern about countries not contributing equally to NATO, and Rubio said other presidents have similar sentiments.
“He’s not the first American president. In fact, almost every American president has, at some point or another, said that other NATO members are not doing enough,” Rubio said in an interview with CNN. I’m dissatisfied with that,” he said. “You know, Mr. Trump is the first person to put it in these terms.”
Mr. Christie said he knows Mr. Rubio and thinks he is “much more sensible than that comment and that he is just amenable.”
With a rematch between Trump and President Biden looking likely, Christie previously said he would not vote for the former president “under any circumstances.” He argued that the only thing that “doesn’t feel a little bit okay” is that Trump-era politics will “soon be over.”
“It’s either going to end in November when Donald Trump loses the general election, or it’s going to end in four years,” he said. “But either way, it’s going to end, and all the things that people like Marko, Ted, Elise Stefanik and others are saying, if they don’t make it their own. It probably won’t.”
“And I think it’s going to be a very, very rude awakening for all of them,” Christie continued.
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