This guy might have had some popularity back years ago when he was elected governor of New Jersey, which is always a surprise win for a conservative, but he isn't making any friends in the conservative world these days. To me he seems like a tool of the DNC and is out there only because he has a little bit of clout and is being put on the spot to talk trash about other candidates rather than being a serious contender for a Presidential bid himself.
As expected, he is going after Trump pretty hard and this isn't unique. Most of the others in the running are doing the same as it seems to be the only way they can really get any attention. I think this strategy is backfiring for most of these people because Trump's supporters aren't going to change their minds no matter what happens. Too much damage and attacks have been made on their guy Trump and this combined with a now massive distrust in anything that the government or media says or does makes any sort of "new discovery" about Trump get immediately pushed to the wayside and not even believed in the first place by his supporters.
The media did this to themselves and the government has been working on establishing this lack of trust for decades. It isn't solely any one particular administration's fault, but the way things are being escalated over and over these days, I think you would be pretty hard-pressed to find anyone out there that actually trusts the government at all. Sure, you might be able to find some particular person or two that is so completely dedicated to their party that they will pretend they trust the government, but this opinion will quickly change if it isn't one of their guys that holds the position.
Here is one thing that I know for sure though. Chris Christie will not be the GOP nominee this year and he isn't doing himself any favors if he has intentions of running for some sort of office in the future either.
At the moment he is a dramatic underdog who isn't even managing to get 1% in almost every poll. I can only imagine that anyone would would answer that they do want to vote for this guy are just Conservatives who really don't like Donald Trump and are going to gravitate towards the candidate that says the nastiest things about him.
src
To make matters worse for Christie, he is fat, kind of funny-looking, and used to kiss Trump's ass on the daily when he was working for him. Christie to me kind of is the epitome of a traditional politician in that he will suck up to whoever happens to be in power at the time in order to progress his own interests. He also abuses his office and lives by the rules for thee not for me mantra that is so popular with the regular Joe in the public.
This is epitomized by his picture taken from an airplane where he was with his family on a beach that was closed to the rest of the public because of budget shutdowns of national parks, of which the Island Beach State Park was one of them.
src
His response to the anger surrounding this issue didn't help matters when he said in an interview "I'm sorry that not everyone is the governor."
To me Christie seems like an old-school mafia type who just does whatever he wants without much concern for what happens to everyone else. I think we could successfully argue that most politicians are the same and that they only pretend to care about the public just enough to keep them voting for them.
However, he is remarkably unpopular as far as the upcoming primary season winds up. He fails to generate a single digit of support yet he carries on and when I see this I wonder what the motivation of him, and others like him, actually is. In the case of Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and even Vivek Ramaswamy's reasons for continuing in an almost certain loss situation and this is to get their name out there and establish themselves for running for office in the future. I suppose there is some chance, although it is a very small one that DeSantis could win the nomination, but the rest of them don't have a snowball's chance in hell.
With Christie, not only does he not have a chance to win this one, but he isn't doing himself any favors for potential future runs either. Furthermore, he isn't doing this to obtain a position in Trump's cabinet should DJT win in 2024. He's already worked there, he already burned that bridge. Trump and him hate one another now and he wouldn't stand a chance of getting anything out of Trump if and when he wins in 2024. So what is his motivation? Could there be some sort of side deal where he is vying for a position with a media company? This also seems unlikely because these networks tend to hire people that don't look horrible... well, with the exception of Brian Stelter.