Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie on Sunday slammed his party’s requirement that White House hopefuls vow to support the eventual nominee if they want to make the debate stage in the crowded primary field.
“I think the pledge is just a useless idea,” the former New Jersey governor said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And by the way, in all my life, we never had to have Republican primary candidates take a pledge. We were Republicans, and the idea is you’d support the Republican whether you won or whether you lost, and you didn’t have to ask somebody to sign something.”
Fellow GOP presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson, former Arkansas governor, was rebuffed by the party when he sought a carve-out for the loyalty pledge if the nominee is convicted of a crime amid charges against former President Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home after leaving office.
Mr. Christie, an anti-Trump Republican and frequent critic of his own party, said he’s told Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel the pledge is “a bad idea.”
He went on to take a jab at Mr. Trump, who is also running again for president, by saying he’ll take this cycle’s loyalty pledge “just as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016.” Mr. Trump, before being nominated in 2016, refused to commit to supporting the eventual nominee.
“There were 10 of us on the stage, nine of us raised our hands,” Mr. Christie said. “The one who didn’t was Donald Trump.”
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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