- Chris Christie said Donald Trump's administration "didn't get a lot of stuff done."
- "The wall isn't built. Obamacare is still there. We didn't get an infrastructure package done," he said.
- Christie blamed the failures on incompetence and poor management in the White House.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, widely viewed as a potential 2024 presidential contender, said former President Donald Trump's administration didn't deliver on its most important policy priorities.
Christie pointed out that Trump failed to build a wall on the southern US border, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and pass an infrastructure bill, despite making these promises central to his 2016 campaign.
"We didn't get a lot of stuff done," Christie told Josh Holmes, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's former chief of staff, during a podcast interview that aired on Tuesday. "Let's just go through the list of things. The wall isn't built. Obamacare is still there. We didn't get an infrastructure package done that we wanted, so now we're stuck with theirs."
The Trump administration built just 80 miles of the US-Mexico border wall where no barrier existed before, and another approximately 350 miles of wall that replaced an existing wall. That is a far cry from Trump's promise to build thousands of miles of structures along the border and have Mexico pay for it.
On the issue of Obamacare, Republican lawmakers tried several times to repeal the healthcare law, but failed to do so despite having majorities in Congress. Infrastructure became a running joke under the Trump administration after the former president refused to work with Democrats on a bipartisan bill.
Last month, Democrats passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package funding roads, bridges, ports, broadband and a slew of other priorities.
Christie argued that the Trump administration suffered from poor management and that the former president's top advisors were virtually powerless to stop him from doing what he wanted.
"They just were given less and less freedom to do what needed to be done on behalf of the president and the country," Christie said of Trump's aides. "That's a problem. That management style is a problem. I have no problem in the main with the policies that were followed by the Trump administration that they attempted to implement. I really think they were very, very solid."
But, Christie added, "That's not the point. The point is you've got to be able to get it done."
Christie is on a press tour after publishing his new book, "Republican Rescue: Saving the Party From Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden." Christie was a close advisor to Trump through the 2020 election after becoming the first prominent Republican politician to endorse him in the 2016 presidential primary.
Christie has since been critical of Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was "rigged" by Democrats and insists Trump and the GOP needs to abandon its lies about the last election in order to move forward. But Trump has only doubled down on the conspiracy theories and misinformation, claiming that Republicans must "solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020" in order to get GOP voters to the polls next year and in 2024.
"The former president of United States, who's ostensibly the leader of the Republican Party, is still talking about an election that happened 13 months ago that he lost," Christie told Holmes.