Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie became the second Republican candidate in a day to get booed at a Republican event in Florida for his opposition to former President Donald Trump — with the 2024 hopeful telling his hecklers that they “fear the truth.”
Christie spoke at the Florida Freedom Summit in Kissimmee, Florida, and was met with yells and boos the moment he took the stage, with cries of “Trump!” and “Drop out now!”
“What a shock, you’re for Trump, I’m gonna fall over dead,” he said. “Now look, every one of those boos, every one of those catcalls, every one of those yells will not solve one problem we face in this country.”
The boos kept coming and Christie, who has been a vociferous Trump critic and often endures jeers for his comments, continued to push back.
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Republican Presidential Candidate Chris Christie speaks at the Florida Freedom Summit at the Gaylord Palms Resort on November 4, 2023 in Kissimmee, Florida, United States. ((Photo by Paul Hennesy/Anadolu via Getty Images))
“Your anger against the truth is reprehensible. When you think about the problems that our country and this world is facing… this type of pettiness is beneath the process of electing a president,” he said, before telling the crowd that they “fear the truth.”
“The problem is, you want to shout down any voice that says anything different than what you want to hear. And you can continue to do it… believe me, it doesn’t bother me one bit,” he said.
Christie’s hostile reception at the conference came shortly after former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson was booed for telling his fellow Republicans that “there is a significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offense next year.”
“That may or may not happen. Before you vote in March and it might not make any difference to you, but it will make a difference for our chances to attract independent voters in November. It will make a difference for those down ticket races for Congress and Senate, and it will weaken the GOP for decades to come. As a party, we must support the rule of law,” he said.
The claim was met with boos from the crowd for over a minute.
“We cannot win as a country without integrity in the White House,” Hutchinson continued. “And while some will ignore that destructive behavior of the former president, I assure you we ignore it at our own peril. The next generation will not look favorably back on this time.“
Trump’s the commanding front-runner in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination as he makes his third straight White House run. He saw his lead expand over his rivals during the spring and summer as he made history as the first former or current president in American history to be indicted for a crime. Trump’s four indictments – including in federal court in Washington D.C. and in Fulton County court in Georgia on charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss – have only fueled his support among Republican voters.
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The former president currently enjoys massive double-digit leads in the latest national polls and very large double-digit advantages in surveys in the crucial early voting nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
The most recent national poll – from Quinnipiac University – indicated Trump at 64% support in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 15% and former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 6%.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, Christie and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy each stood at 3%, with everyone else at 1% or less.
Christie, who’s running a second time for the presidency after an unsuccessful bid in 2016, is a long-shot for the GOP nomination, as he concentrates much of his campaign on New Hampshire, where his support stands in the lower double digits to upper single digits in public opinion surveys.
Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie speaks at the New Hampshire Republican Party’s First in the Nation Leadership Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire, on October 13, 2023. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
Hutchinson faces an even steeper climb to win the nomination, after failing to qualify for the second GOP presidential primary debate. Hutchinson’s a former federal attorney turned two-term congressman who served as Drug Enforcement Administration administrator and Department of Homeland Security undersecretary during then-President George W. Bush’s administration before winning election and re-election as Arkansas governor.
Both Hutchinson and Christie have made their vocal criticism of Trump front-and-center as they bid for the GOP nomination.
Christie dropped out of the 2016 presidential race after distant sixth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, which Trump convincingly won on his way to winning the Republican nomination and eventually the White House.
Christie became the first among the other GOP 2016 contenders to endorse Trump and for years was a top outside adviser to the then-president and chaired Trump’s high-profile commission on opioids. However, the two had a falling out after Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Biden. In the past two and a half years, Christie has become one of the harshest Trump critics in the Republican Party.