Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany tore into GOP presidential contender and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over a campaign strategy she says is a sure loser.
Christie, a former federal prosecutor who frequently criticizes her onetime boss, Donald Trump, has been praising the Biden Justice Department and the FBI despite their unprecedented focus on the former president, who has been indicted several times, including for an alleged crime — mishandling classified documents — that President Biden himself has been accused of doing.
After Christie’s recent defense of FBI Director Christopher Wray, McEnany said during a segment on “Outnumbered” that it won’t win over many Republicans, let alone supporters of Trump.
Earlier on Fox News, Christie said in reference to Wray’s testimony before a House committee earlier in the day: “I did recommend him to President Trump, and I’m proud that I did.”
“Those things they’re talking about today, and the director made this point over and over again, are all things from when Jim Comey, Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch were in charge of the Justice Department — before he got put in charge,” Christie said. “He fired the entire Comey leadership team out of the FBI, they’re all gone.”
“Is it all fixed? Of course, it’s not all fixed. Jim Comey and Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch drastically harmed the Department of Justice and the FBI. And Chris Wray has now spent years fixing that,” Christie added. “What you saw today was an animated and combative FBI director who is defending the men and women who work for him… and do a great job…”
He added: “So yeah, I think Chris Wray has done a very good job, and I think a lot of the stuff you see today is theater, people trying to raise money for campaigns.”
McEnany chimed in after the clip played.
“Best of luck to Chris Christie with that message in a GOP primary, which has tremendous distrust for the FBI,” she said.
After noting that Wray has made some positive changes and done some good things at the bureau, she also said much of what is wrong today he hasn’t addressed.
“There’s a lot of questions for him — this ‘radical traditionalist Catholic’ memo which he rescinded, he said he was ‘aghast’ by it. But yet he won’t allow the authors of that before Congress,” she added.
“None of this instills confidence in the American people, many of whom have distrust for the FBI.”
During an interview on “America’s Newsroom,” Hemmer kicked off the segment by noting that Trump is “crushing it” in the polls, which led to him asking if voters actually want a Trump critic in the Republican primary. Christie — who has clearly positioned himself as a “Trump critic” — was not pleased with Hemmer’s opening praise of Trump.
After shrugging off Trump, Christie turned his attention to President Joe Biden. That led to Hemmer bringing up the border, prompting Christie to agree “the border is ridiculous.”
That’s when Hemmer opined that Trump’s policies “did much better on everything that you just mentioned.”
“Wait a second, Bill. His policies did not do better at the border. Not true,” Christie retorted. “Remember what he promised in 2016? He was going to build a wall across the entire border in the first four years, and Mexico was going to pay for it. We got a wall that’s about a quarter of the way done, and Mexico hasn’t given us one peso yet.
“So Donald Trump in 2016 was the guy who had no record, so he couldn’t be examined in a very specific way. He now said he was going to do that with immigration. And by the way, he had Congress for the first two years fully controlled by the Republicans. Not one change in the immigration laws,” he said.
