Chris Christie says Trump is threatening to skip debates because ‘he’s afraid’

Former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday branded former President Donald Trump a coward for threatening not to participate in the 2024 Republican presidential primary debates. 

“Obviously, he’s afraid,” Christie told radio host Hugh Hewitt during an interview. “He’s afraid to get on the stage against people who are serious.”

Christie, who endorsed Trump in 2016 after dropping out of the GOP primary race, has become a vocal critic of the 76-year-old former commander in chief and is weighing another run at the White House. 

He told Hewitt on Wednesday that the GOP should hold “as many” debates as possible in an “open format” that would allow for follow-up questions and prevent candidates from providing “soundbyte-y answers” with little substance. 

“If he really cares about the country — and I have deep questions about that — but if he really cares about the country, then he’s going to get up there, and he shouldn’t be afraid,” Christie said of Trump. 

“If, in fact, his ideas are so great, if his leadership is so outstanding, then his lead will only increase if he gets on the stage, not decrease,” Christie argued. 

Last week, the former president suggested that he would be skipping the primary debates because he is polling so far ahead of his 2024 GOP rivals. 

“I’m leading by 40 points. A lot of people say, ‘Why would you do a debate when you have people at two and three and fifteen and fourteen [percent]?’” Trump told John Catsimatidis, host of the “Cats & Cosby Show” on WABC 770. 

“People don’t debate when they have these massive leads,” he added. 

The 45th president also said that the site of the second scheduled primary debate –  the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California –  was an issue for him. 

“The publisher of the Washington Post is the chairman of the Reagan library. And that’s where one of the debates would be. I don’t want to be there,” Trump told Catsimatidis, deriding the newspaper as “the enemy of the people.” 

Christie – who is polling between 1% and 2% – told Hewitt that he would decide whether to launch his own presidential campaign in the next two weeks. 

“The presidency is not a scripted exercise, and so that’s why I think debates are important,” Christie said, adding that Trump “doesn’t have a lot of serious answers for the problems that are facing the country right now.”

“All he wants to do is go back and reprosecute the 2020 election because his feelings are hurt. He’s a child in that regard,” the former New Jersey governor said.