Former President Trump made fun of former Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) for being overweight and for using the term “small” several times at the launch of his presidential candidacy this week.
Trump posted a video of his declaration that had been modified to put a buffet of food in front of the former governor, hitting Christie, who has been harshly critical of the 45th president in the last several years, on his weight. A dish of food was held in his edited hand.
In Manchester, New Hampshire, the country’s first Republican primary state, where he made his presidential announcement, Christie often referred to himself as “small”.
“We have leaders who have steered us in the direction of becoming little. Small by their standard. By the way they act, they are small. Small in comparison to what they advise us to give attention to.” He said, “Smaller and smaller.”
“They also use various methods. By separating us into ever-smaller groups, they are really making us smaller. And they try to convince you that joining these smaller groups would make us feel more at ease. You will probably fail to hear things you disagree with as you join a smaller and smaller circle. You simply watch the news that you wish to hear when you get into smaller groups. The smaller the group you join, the less likely it is that you will ever take offense to anything.”
In another tweet on his social media site, Trump slammed the former governor for using the term often and questioned, “Does he possess a psychological issue with SIZE?”
“In reality,” Trump continued, “His speech was SMALL, and it wasn’t very good. No one understood what he was talking about since it rambled so much.”
The 45th president also brought up Christie’s dismal popularity rating as governor in addition to his bad showing in the 2016 GOP primary contest, in which he withdrew after the New Hampshire primary.
A Quinnipiac survey from that year and a more comprehensive analysis by Harry Enton of FiveThirtyEight found that Christie had the second-lowest approval rate among any governor who hadn’t been charged with or found guilty of a crime during their time in office. Christie took up this title in 2017.
In New Hampshire, Christie was quite critical of Trump.
Before mentioning the 45th president in particular, he stated, “Beware if your leaders aren’t prepared to say to you that they are human and fallible, that they make errors, that they ache like you, that they even bleed the same as you, and also that they experience disappointment and letdowns.”
Shortly after the former governor entered the campaign, former Vice President Mike Pence as well as Governor Doug Burgum (R-ND) also declared their intentions to run.
