‘Don’t Be Fooled’: Why Leading GOPers Are Taking Aim At Both Trump and DeSantis

The ex-president has his rock-solid core and little else. The real GOP fight is over who should emerge as the best alternative.

AUSTIN, Texas — When former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took his turn on stage at a Republican donor conference here late last month, he brought the crowd alive with a rousing and extended denunciation of Donald Trump.

Demanding his party “stop whispering” about their unease with Trump, Christie excoriated Trump for falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen, propelling a series of lackluster candidates last year and generally presiding over the decline of the GOP over the last half decade.

Yet what was even more revealing about Christie’s half-hour remarks, a recording of which I obtained, was the less direct but unmistakable and certainly not whispered criticism he leveled at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Christie called DeSantis’s warnings about sliding into a proxy war with China“one of the most naïve things I’ve ever heard in my life” — arguing America is already locked in such a conflict; he told the donors “don’t be fooled by false choices” being pushed by “a fellow governor,” a reference to DeSantis’s argument that Biden was too focused on Ukraine’s border at the expense of America’s border; and, most pointedly, Christie wondered how exactly “they teach foreign policy in Tallahassee.”

As DeSantis heads to Iowa Friday for what’s effectively the start of his presidential bid, his initial strength with Republican contributors and voters alike is prompting the other would-be candidates to divide or at least pair their attacks. With Trump appearing to have an unshakable core of support, and the nature of the primary shaping up to be who can emerge as the strongest alternative to him, the rest of the potential field plainly feels pressure to dislodge DeSantis from his early perch as that candidate.

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