Originally published at: Trump skips debate because "he's scared to death of" one of the candidates, says GOP's Adam Kinzinger (video) | Boing Boing
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I can’t understand how one could define themself a Republican and be so harsh against Trump, since in the latest elections their official Platform was whatever Trump says.
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Meh. He’s not afraid of Christie, trump can out bullshit him. But A+ for Kinzinger for the baiting.
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It’s a nice thing to believe, but there is a bigger bully out there than Christie, and his name’s Donald Trump. And it doesn’t matter how many zingers Christie drops, all Trump has to say is “Chris Christie’s fat,” and the audience will fall to the floor hooting in rapture.
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He’s a) not smart enough to be scared of anyone and b) too ignorant to be scared of anyone.
He’s skipping because he’s not being paid for it and he doesn’t need it.
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This. Instead of denying this, we need to be spreading it far and wide.
Trump hearing that people think he is scared of Christie and avoiding him will drive him mad. His reaction will be unpredictable, but most unlikely to be to his credit.
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His reaction will be limited to watching himself on the teevee the night of the debate with Tucker the frozen dinner heir.
Will Tucker be announced as trump’s VP? Will Tucker share his ball tanning techniques with trump? Will Tucker laugh like a hyena hearing trump’s Christie fat jokes?
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Chris Christie cast as Renfield?
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I don’t know, I buy it. He’s proven countless times that he’s a craven coward and his bluster is a juvenile attempt to mask it. When he had to share a stage with Hilary and Biden, he couldn’t stop moving around the stage, interrupting and feigning dismissiveness. He never seemed in control of himself or the dais except to those who believe bully=strength. Of all the field, Christie is clearly the only one who will actually debate on the merits of fitness for office, which is trump’s ultimate weakness. As long as he controls the venue, he can say whatever he likes, but if someone is there supplying valid criticism all he has is 8th grade bullying. I mean, it works for his audience, but I suspect he also knows how weak it makes him look to all other voters.
But really, whatever the reason, his absence was a foregone conclusion. He has nothing but disdain for any other human, he was so unhinged in prior debates that the mods aren’t just rolling over for him 100% of the time any more so he loses that method of controlling the stage somewhat, and most importantly, he has absolutely nothing to gain from it. I’ll be shocked if he actually shows up to a debate with Biden.
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Christie is an interesting case: not a good case, but interesting. He obviously, personally hates Trump - with good reason - and has a realistic understanding of how much damage Trump will do to the nation if re-elected, so he’s out to prevent that. Defeating Trump will undermine everyone who supported Trump - NONE of which stood up for him when Trump abandoned him. If he tries to take the entire GOP power structure on the way he’s confronting Trump, they’ll take away the small Republican microphone he has managed to re-assemble for himself. Unless a strong traditional GOP conservative emerges who can re-enlist the party members who left when the party turned to Trump emerges, this fascist Grand Old Party is done for - and THAT’s what Christie wants as his legacy. All because they threw him aside.
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Locally here in Illinois, we’ve got (amazingly) a fairly progressive billionaire as a Democratic governor. Considering the Republican before him was so very bad, which meant pretty much anything was better, he’s still pushed through a ton of progressive legislation and also spent a lot of time during the COVID event pushing hard on Trump.
All this said, my die-hard Republican neighbor down the street had, during the last election, signs up protesting various things that were on the ballot (all of which won, thankfully) plus one very tasteful one - JB is FAT. It was literally one of the campaign slogans of the other candidate.
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It’s fun to poke at him, but the only real reason he’s not doing the debates is because there is no reason for him to participate. He’s tripling the Desantis’ polling, and he can counter-program with a soft-ball interview with Tucker Carlson and get 10x the amount of press coverage of all the other candidates combined.
He is a bully and an idiot, but neither is necessary to explain the pretty straightforward decision here.
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I’m not usually one to give them any credit but: 1.) Kinzinger actually having the guts to vote to impeach gives him some of the only credibility to be found in the modern GOP, as low a bar as it is, and 2.) Christie seems to be the only candidate that realizes that if he wants to beat Trump, he can’t ride his coattails at the same time.
It’s ridiculous seeing all the MAGA folks run for president while also trying to dance around that they already have a candidate.
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Yeah, this. There’s no upside to trump in participating in the debate. That said, trump is a bully, and bullies are cowards, so Kinzinger might not be entirely wrong.
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That and IIRC, Christie was a bigger sycophant than even Lindsay Graham 4 years ago and got snubbed.
That happened right? Or did I skip multiverses again?
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In a saner timeline Jon Huntsman would be cleaning Trump’s clock and on his way to sewing the nomination up.
Note: I am not saying that I would support Huntsman in an election, rather, to me, he’s the type of Republican that Republicans used to run back when they were sane, and is an example of a Republican I think could beat Biden’s pretty easily in '24.
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Kinzinger was a Trump supporter. He voted with Trump nearly 100% of the time he was in the House. His only real claim to fame was that he had an (R) next to his name and had the audacity to come out and say, “hey, you guys… January 6 was pretty fucked up; Trump and his cohorts should be held to account for their role in this #lawandorderparty”. This of course made him a pariah.
I really wish CNN would stop giving him a platform as some sort of “reasonable Republican” when the only notable thing he ever did was to point out the obvious. (See also: Cheney, Liz and Pence, Mike.)
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Also, though, can’t understate how much of a nothing headline this is. It’s just bias-confirming gossip.
Kinzinger says that Trump’s scared of Christie, because he has… insight into what’s going on in Trump world? Ain’t nobody good at predicting what he’s going to do of substance or how he feels. If Kinzinger was such a great barometer, he’d never have supported him in the first place.
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This is an interesting point.
From some viewpoints the last sane Republicans were before Reagan got elected (certainly before the Tea Party) but let’s shelve that and look at the modern party. Their opinions and policies on all sorts of issues – abortion rights, healthcare, taxation, education, human rights, foreign policy, gun ctrol, etc. etc. – are at variance with what 60-70% of the general public actually want.
Is it possible for the GOP to row back from that position, by dumping Trump, for example, and if so, how soon could they do it?
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