- Mar 01, 2016 · Trump’s Latest Acquisition: Christie’s Soul. ... Chris Christie gazed up at the back of Donald Trump’s golden ... Trump’s Latest Purchase: Christie ...
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03.02.16 9:26 AM ET
Trump’s Latest Acquisition: Christie’s Soul
Chris
Christie seemed trapped in a nightmare at Trump’s press conference
Tuesday night—and in a lot of ways, he was and it’s all his fault.
Chris
Christie gazed up at the back of Donald Trump’s golden head in a
Mar-a-Lago ballroom the evening of Super Tuesday. His mouth was slightly
open. His brow was furrowed. His eyes were wide and uncertain, as if
adjusting to the soft light of the crystal chandeliers that adorn his
new world for the first time since Friday, when he shocked the political
class and the members of his own inner circle by endorsing Trump’s candidacy.
“Look,
Planned Parenthood has done very good work for many, many—for millions
of women,” Trump told the cameras, confidently. “I’m a conservative, but
I’m a commonsense conservative.”
Behind
him, Christie seemed to shudder as his political career passed before
his eyes. He had once admitted to supporting Planned Parenthood himself,
in the mid-1990s when he served in local government, but he had long
since converted to social conservatism and staunch anti-abortion
politics. He spent an entire week of his presidential campaign this year
denying that he had ever supported Planned Parenthood, and now here he
stood behind a man singing the organization’s praises—and winning in
spite of it.
Christie’s mouth curled into a frown, and then it opened.
But all that escaped was dead air.
A
few weeks ago in Exeter, New Hampshire, when he was still a candidate,
Christie had warned of what could happen if an unprepared
Republican—specifically Marco Rubio—got too close to the presidency.
“The
lights go on—they’re very bright and they’re very hot,” he said, “and
they get brighter and hotter the closer you get to the presidency.”
At
the time, he never could have predicted that he would soon find himself
paralyzed beneath the the glare of those lights reflecting off the
golden mane of a man he, and the rest of the establishment he belonged
to then, regarded as a joke.
Trump
was, he said then, nothing but a reality TV star with ideas that were
not just impossible to execute, but fundamentally stupid. “You know it’s
all make believe, right?” he told an audience at a town hall in
Hampton. “There’s no boardroom in New York where you look at people and
say, ‘You’re fired!’ It’s television.”
But
Tuesday night was not, as some on Twitter joked, a hostage situation.
Unless Christie was both the hostage and the hostage-taker, his
opportunism having finally succeeded in subsuming the last remaining
shreds of his humanity, assuming he had any to begin with.
Christie
has long been mocked for his heft, but behind Trump, he looked puny and
unremarkable, a hotel end-table of a human being.
He
shifted his weight from foot to foot and periodically looked down. When
his eyes rose to meet the scene again, disappointment spread across his
face.
It was real. He really had done this to himself.
The
end of Christie’s presidential campaign was always going to be the end
of his political career. Any casual observer could’ve told you as much.
Maybe he would become a high-priced securities and appellate lawyer
afterward, like he was before his time as the U.S. Attorney and then
governor. Or maybe he would pivot to punditry on one of the many cable
networks he frequently appeared on as a guest. But with his endorsement
of Trump, it seems possible that Christie never thought that far ahead.
Maybe, after dropping out, he panicked at the idea that he would never
again control a media cycle, never again be met by a sea of cameras and
recorders shoved in his face.
His
decision to endorse Trump was not a well thought out one. It was not
deliberated over with his top advisers. And its effect on what was left
of his career was swift and brutal.
Earlier
in the day on Tuesday, seven New Jersey newspapers—all owned by the
publisher Gannett—called on Christie to resign in a joint editorial,
including the Daily Record, the paper of his hometown, Mendham.
“What
an embarrassment,” the editorial began. “For the good of the state,
it’s time for Christie to do his long-neglected constituents a favor and
resign as governor. If he refuses, citizens should initiate a recall
effort.”
This
came after Meg Whitman, the former chairwoman of his defunct
presidential campaign, issued a statement that basically said, “You are
dead to me.”
After
Christie announced he would campaign for Trump, some Trump supporters,
who are defined by their opposition to conventional politics, told me
“it’s just politics.”
But
at what point can shameless social-climbing and star-fucking no longer
be shrugged off as savvy networking? When does it stop being just politics and start being a moral disgrace?
Christie
seemed to be asking himself those very questions Tuesday evening. For
the first time in his public life, he looked disgusted with himself—and
justifiably so.
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