Granted, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is going to attack and otherwise antagonize Donald Trump but he ran a real doozy up the flagpole Wednesday to see if it would fly, that being that the former president will avoid the first Republican primary debate because he is “scared to death of Chris Christie.”
Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis, who recently penned a piece titled “Showing Up to the GOP Debate Would Be the Ultimate Trump Flex,” called the former New Jersey governor the “X factor” when it comes to the upcoming debate.
“I’m curious to see if Donald Trump is afraid of Chris Christie, so afraid of Chris Christie that he doesn’t show up, that he uses excuses such as, I’m not going to sign the pledge, the RNC pledge,” Lewis said. “Or whether Donald Trump is just an egomaniac who craves attention, who loves attention, and who now feels that he has a bigger chip on his shoulder, has to unburden himself and play the victim again that he shows up in Milwaukee. And I think I’m leaning toward the latter. He may not fully appreciate the danger that Chris Christie specifically poses.”
He said there may be an “opening” at the debate for another GOP candidate to point to Trump’s four indictments to suggest he may not be electable in the general election, suggesting Trump may want to attend to counter this line of attack.
“If Donald Trump shows up and I think the biggest flex would be to turn himself in, you know, to surrender himself and then go to the debate,” Lewis said. “I think Donald Trump shows, look, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. And so I think if you add that in and just his compulsive need for attention, I think he shows.”
Scarborough didn’t have time for such possibilities, essentially calling Trump a chicken.
“I’m going to, I’m going to take the other side of it. I do think he’s scared of Chris Christie,” he said. “He saw what Chris Christie did to Marco Rubio when Chris Christie went into a debate with one thing in mind. He knows Chris Christie put Jared Kushner’s father in jail for a very long time. He knows he’s a prosecutor who’s ruthless and knows how to push his case. And he also knows that his secret sauce in 2016 was being the disrupter. Right? Shaking Hillary Clinton up on the debate stage, shaking DeMarcos and everybody else up on the debate stage. That gig that’s like eight years old, right? That’s Elvis in ’77 now.”
(DeMarcos apparently being a reference to Sen. Rubio.)
“And I think Chris Christie’s got his number and he knows — Donald Trump is, the gut instinct, his political gut instinct is second to none, like he sees it coming.” Scarborough continued. “And so I think he’s scared to death of Chris Christie and will not have the guts to go, or the nerve to go on stage with Chris Christie anywhere.”
Citing a source from “Trump’s orbit,” Politico’s Jonathan Lemire floated the idea that if Trump stays away from the debate perhaps Christie “trains his sights on Ron DeSantis and maybe finishes him off there.”
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Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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