“She spent $68 million so far,” Christie said. “And we spent 12. I mean, who’s punching above their weight and who’s getting a return on their investment?”
“She’s going to get smoked, you and I both know,” he added. “She’s not up to this.”
Christie, 61, also said that a “petrified” DeSantis had called him, but the audio cut before he could finish that comment.
Christie, a former U.S. attorney who served as governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018, did not immediately endorse any of his former competitors upon leaving the race Wednesday. He has been the leading critic of former president Donald Trump on the campaign trail and, during a town hall on Tuesday, said that he would happily get out of the way “for somebody if they actually were going against Donald Trump.”
“I’ve said from the beginning that if I didn’t see a path to winning, that I would get out,” he said Tuesday.
Shortly after the Christie hot mic moment went viral online, DeSantis posted about Christie’s comments on social media.
“I agree with Christie that Nikki Haley is ‘going to get smoked,’ ” DeSantis wrote. However, he made no reference to Christie’s description of him as “petrified.”
Earlier Wednesday, before Christie suspended his campaign, DeSantis had called the former New Jersey governor and expressed gratitude for his role in the race, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation. The person said Christie also ridiculed Haley to DeSantis during that phone call, a detail first reported by NBC News.
This was Christie’s second campaign for the presidency after he unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination in 2016. After dropping out of the race that year, Christie swiftly endorsed Trump, despite the two men trading bitter attacks through the primary, and later was named head of Trump’s transition team.
Christie, however, would eventually become one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics — calling him “a failure on policy and a failure on character” — and said his focus in this year’s race was to prevent Trump from holding office again. Christie clashed with other GOP opponents for not being willing to criticize Trump directly because they knew it was politically inconvenient.
“Maybe it’s because they have future aspirations. Maybe those future aspirations are now or maybe they’re four years from now,” Christie said at the fourth Republican presidential primary debate last month. “But the fact of the matter is, the truth needs to be told. … [Trump] is unfit to be president.”
Christie has largely focused his attacks on Trump during the previous GOP debates and avoided criticizing Haley directly on stage. He did come to Haley’s defense at the most recent GOP debate, after entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy belittled Haley’s time in the Trump administration as a “cup-of-coffee stint at the U.N.”
“Look, if you want to disagree on issues, that’s fine,” Christie said. “And Nikki and I disagree on some issues, but I’ll tell you this: I’ve known her for 12 years, which is longer than [Ramaswamy] even started to vote in the Republican primary. And while we disagree about some issues … we don’t disagree on this. This is a smart, accomplished woman.”
Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.