Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie started his Republican presidential campaign last June by going scorched earth on former President Donald Trump.
Just before Christie announced Wednesday that he was suspending his campaign, he went scorched earth on rival GOP candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on a live microphone.
Christie then announced his campaign exit at a town hall event in Windham, New Hampshire.
Christie had previously described Haley as “smart” but had also criticized the former South Carolina governor as being “unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth.”
On Wednesday, the microphone captured Christie telling someone named Wayne that Haley’s presidential bid would fail miserably.
“She’s gonna get smoked, and you and I both know it,” Christie said. “She’s not up to this.”
And even though Christie’s anti-Trump campaign hardly won over anyone even vaguely Republican, he bragged that he did pretty well considering he got only $12 million in donations, compared to the hundreds of millions collected by Haley and DeSantis, the Florida governor.
“I mean, who’s punching above their weight and who’s getting a return on their investment?” he said.
Christie also predicted Trump would easily win the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
The former governor also said that a “petrified” DeSantis had called him, but the mic cut off before he could serve up more tea.
You can hear the remarks below.
As often happens in these situations, many people on X (formerly Twitter) had thoughts about Christie’s comments.
HuffPost reached out to the Christie, Haley and DeSantis campaigns for comment, but no one immediately responded.
However, DeSantis posted a tweet that addressed one part of Christie’s hot mic remarks (spoiler alert: not the part where he was mentioned).
But his post didn’t get the response he probably wanted.