Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and current Republican presidential candidate, appeared intent on making news early Tuesday during an MSNBC interview.
To the question of whether he believed Donald Trump — with whom he was aligned from the February day in 2016 on which Christie endorsed his then-rival through Jan. 6, 2021, when Christie of late insists the bond was permanently broken — had broken the law, as now formally alleged by both state and federal prosecutors, Christie responded: “Oh, yeah.”
Most definitively, in Christie’s view, in the case of the classified government documents taken to, and stored at, Trump’s membership club and personal residence in Palm Beach, Fla., followed up by an alleged attempt to destroy surveillance footage. Christie’s characterization of that latter episode: “Abbott and Costello meets the Corleones.”
But the quotable Christie’s return to an assessment of the geopolitical import of the U.S.’s continued support for Ukraine’s bid to reverse the full-scale Russian invasion launched in February 2022 was the interview’s central takeaway:
“‘Ukraine is the undercard.’”
By extension, the featured match, in Christie’s view, would be China vs. Taiwan.
And Xi Jinping is, said Christie, watching closely from Beijing to gauge Western resolve in the defense of democracy and independence in Ukraine, in the assumption that lessons can be drawn about how far Washington and its allies would go in backing Taiwan.
From the archives (March 2023): Tucker Carlson questionnaire reveals a fault line among Republicans: U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion
