Confident About 2024 Win, Trump Swats Away Christie and Other GOP Critics

Poll shows voters unenthused about both Biden and Trump, raising chances of possible Independent candidate surfacing

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announces that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie officially supports the Trump campaign during a rally at the Fort Worth Convention Center on Feb. 26, 2016, in Fort Worth, Texas. Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump is swatting away some prominent GOP predictions that his attempt to retake the White House will fail.

Just days after Trump debuted his 2024 presidential run with a speech in New Hampshire, the governor of that state said he doubted Trump’s bid to retake the White House from Democrat President Joe Biden would succeed.

Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H.) also said he was thinking about running against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination; so did the mayor of Miami, Florida, Francis Suarez, according to ABC News interviews on Feb. 5.

Neither of those potential candidates faced Trump’s wrath. But Republican Chris Christie did in the wake of Christie’s ABC News prediction of a Trump loss.

Now an ABC News contributor, Christie predicted Trump would fall to defeat in 2024 for the same reason he lost in 2020: He’s “toxic,” Christie said.

Trump Fires Back

Trump retorted on Truth Social: “‘Sloppy’ Chris Christie, the failed former governor of New Jersey, spent almost his entire last year in office campaigning in New Hampshire for the Republican nomination for president.”

“Much like his term in office, where he left with an approval rating of just 9 percent, his presidential campaign was a complete disaster. He endorsed me the following day, later recommended Chris Wray for the FBI [how did that work out?], went down in flames, and then was salvaged by ABC fake news. I never wanted him!”

Christie later replied on Twitter: “I’m the target of Donald Trump’s new tantrum. None of his lies about me today bothered him when he asked me to prep him for every general election debate or offered me three different cabinet posts. He’s the only man to lose to Biden outside Delaware. That loss to Joe still stings.”

A former Trump administration member, Christie has flip-flopped from Trump critic to supporter over the years.

In response to the dust-up between Christie and Trump—and other predictions of a Trump loss—one meme supporting Trump pointed out: “The Republicans calling President Trump too divisive for 2024 are the same ones who said he would never win in 2016.”

Beneath those words were pictures of Christie, U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Republican strategist Karl Rove.

‘Old’ and ‘Boring’

During his ABC news analysis of the early stages of the 2024 presidential campaign, Christie bluntly criticized Biden’s chances for reelection.

“Joe Biden is not an exciting candidate,” Christie said. “He’s old. He’s boring. And the American people are not relating to him.”

Christie backed up that opinion by citing a new ABC News-Washington Post poll showing that six out of 10 Americans believe Biden accomplished little during his first two years in office.

While some pundits have stated that Biden is the only candidate who has shown he can beat Trump, Christie said the current political landscape is different now than when Biden sought the presidency in 2020.

“Joe Biden barely had to leave his basement in Wilmington; he didn’t have to campaign ... What he had in 2020 was a gift: Donald Trump was toxic, and he had a pandemic,” Christie said.

As of Feb. 6, Trump was the sole declared candidate for the 2024 presidential race.

Christie, a former presidential candidate who experienced the rigors of facing off against Trump, said he thinks he knows why opponents might be slow to declare their candidacies.

“Who wants to be the first in the pool with Donald Trump—when he has no one else to shoot at?” Christie asked.

More Supporters ‘Than Ever’

Over the past weekend, Trump used his Truth Social platform to tout recent opinion poll results showing him slightly ahead of Biden, but not outside the margin of error, according to the Real Clear Politics average. 

“For all of my many supporters, and the number is higher than ever before, I am pleased to report that ‘our’ poll numbers are excellent,” Trump wrote, even though he said many polls “have proven to be so corrupt, wrong, or incompetent in the past ... they have become somewhat meaningless, just a political weapon.”

In recent days, Trump has reiterated his resolve to “save America” from “radical Left” ideology.

During his initial campaign speech in Salem, N.H., Trump declared: “I’m more angry now, and I’m [more] committed now than I ever was.”

That quote has served as fodder for online meme-makers who support Trump.

On Truth Social, Trump posted a picture of himself shouting and wrote, “This is how I feel about our country, and how it is being totally ruined and destroyed!”

Prime Time For Third-Party Candidate?

Meanwhile, some pundits wonder whether the time might be ripe for a third-party candidate to arise, considering that Americans seem lukewarm about both Biden and Trump.

A poll released on Feb. 3 showed 49 percent of Republican-leaning voters would prefer “someone other than Trump” as their party’s presidential nominee. However, when asked if Trump and Biden were squaring off in an election right now, Trump would win, 48 percent to 44 percent.

If Trump were to win another term as president, 43 percent of those surveyed said they would feel “positive” about that, while only 36 percent reported they would feel that way about a second Biden administration, the ABC News-Washington Post poll said.

Looking ahead to spring 2024, a Vanity Fair article posited this scenario: “America wakes up to realize that voters in the primaries have nominated two men—ages 81 and 77, respectively—to face off in the general election.”

The article said that many people worry about an older president possibly lacking the mental sharpness of a younger one. Further, greater numbers of Americans now consider themselves to be “independents” rather than Democrats or Republicans.

So, the article suggests that such a political climate might favor a third-party candidate rising to the top.

The article says there would be “plenty of qualified and compelling figures happy to step up and accept the challenge.”