Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie expressed his views on the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) request for candidates to pledge their support to the party’s 2024 nominee, calling it a “useless idea.”
“Look, I think the pledge is just a useless idea,” remarked Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
He further elaborated, “And by the way, in all my life, we never had to have Republican primary candidates take a pledge. You know, we were Republicans, and the idea is you’d support the Republican whether you won or whether you lost, and you didn’t have to ask somebody to sign something.”
Christie attributed the need for such a pledge to the era of former President Donald Trump, who is also running in the 2024 election. He shared his concerns with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, stating, “I think it’s a bad idea.”
As part of the RNC’s requirements for White House candidates to participate in the first presidential primary debate, contenders must pledge their support to the eventual party nominee.
Speaking on ABC, Christie assured that he would take the pledge to back the GOP nominee in 2024 “just as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016.”
Recalling the 2016 debate, Christie highlighted the moment when candidates were asked to raise their hands to reaffirm their support for the nominee. He noted, “There were ten of us on the stage, nine of us raised our hands. The one who didn’t was Donald Trump. And so I’ll take the pledge in 2024 just as seriously as Donald Trump took the pledge in 2016.”
