Trump seethes as Chris Christie basks in media spotlight for questioning election fraud lies

Chris Christie is on a collision course with Donald Trump as he launches an exploratory campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination.

The former New Jersey governor has been making high-profile media appearances and suggesting the GOP should look elsewhere after Trump lost his re-election campaign and continues stewing in that loss, and some of those comments are certain to enrage the twice-impeached one-term president, reported Politico.

"I'm not going to get into a back-and-forth with Donald Trump," Christie told Axios-HBO. "But what I will say is this: When I ran for re-election in 2013, I got 60 percent of the vote. When he ran for re-election, he lost to Joe Biden."

Christie is the only 2024 hopeful who has encouraged Republicans to stop looking back at last November for fraudulent explanations for Trump's loss, and he has also slapped the ex-president for running up the debt and cozying up to China.

"Any president, particularly a Republican one, should never be throwing bouquets at a murdering communist dictator in China," Christie said. "We should never be telling that person they're doing something well."

Christie believes the former president's influence over the GOP is weakening, according to several sources with first-hand knowledge of his thinking, and he's hoping to occupy a lane between Trump apologists and Never Trumpers, and both allies and foes agree the former governor is benefiting from softball interviews.

"Christie is trying to create a path, but right now it's a bike lane he needs to widen with the help of the media," said one Trump adviser. "Christie didn't say Trump was a liar. You guys are giving him credit for balls he didn't show."

Trump, however, has noticed Christie's recent media blitz and has indicated he feels threatened.

"Chris Christie, who just made a speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in Las Vegas, was just absolutely massacred by his statements that Republicans have to move on from the past, meaning the 2020 Election Fraud," Trump said Monday in a written statement. "Everybody remembers that Chris left New Jersey with a less than 9% approval rating — a record low, and they didn't want to hear this from him!"