Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) poked a sore spot of Donald Trump’s on Wednesday after the former president attacked him and two sitting GOP governors as “RINOs” for supporting Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R).
“Insightful commentary about three Republican Governors who were overwhelmingly re-elected by their people from a former president who lost to Joe Biden,” Christie tweeted. “Maybe the “R” in RINO really stands for re-elected.”
RINO, one of Trump’s favorite insults for conservatives who don’t support him, stands for “Republican in name only.”
Trump has had a vendetta against Kemp since the governor’s decision to certify Georgia’s 2020 election results, hindering Trump’s relentless efforts to flip the presidential vote count to his favor under false pretenses of fraud at the polls. Trump’s latest statement accused Kemp of being the “worst election integrity governor in the country.”
Christie, Ducey and Ricketts are campaigning for Kemp in his primary challenge against former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), whom Trump has endorsed. Perdue has peddled Trump’s lies that the election he lost to Biden was “rigged and stolen.”
Christie, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and appears likely to do so again in 2024, was a longtime ally of Trump’s. He has been deeply critical of the former president over his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
