Super PAC forms to back Chris Christie’s likely Republican presidential bid

Longtime advisers to Chris Christie have formed a super PAC to support his expected presidential bid as the former New Jersey governor prepares to directly take on Donald Trump in the race for the GOP nomination.

Christie, a former U.S. attorney who is one of the GOP’s most vociferous critics of the former president, has been exploring a presidential bid for months, expressing his frustration that Trump’s current and potential Republican rivals - including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and former vice president Mike Pence - have largely avoided confronting Trump directly.

The formation of the outside group, Tell It Like It Is, is being led by Brian Jones, who was an adviser to the presidential bids of John McCain and Mitt Romney, and is being chaired by Bill Palatucci, a Republican national committeeman from New Jersey and Christie confidant. Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited funds but can’t directly coordinate expenditures with candidates, have become commonplace in GOP presidential primaries as operatives look for ways to marshal support from donors.

Christie and his allies have concluded that the only way to win the nomination is to go directly “through Trump,” according to people familiar with his thinking, and he is eager to get on the debate stage to prosecute the case against Trump’s unfulfilled promises - including his pledge to repeal Obamacare and his vow to build a wall along 2,000 miles of the U.S. southern border and make Mexico pay for it. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe strategy.

During a recent town hall in New Hampshire, Christie called Trump “a failure on policy and a failure on character,” asserting that he is nothing more than a TV star.

“Everybody can be fooled once by a shuckster, by a TV star,” Christie said. “But if we allow ourselves to be fooled twice, we have no one to blame but ourselves. And let me promise you, if he is the nominee in 2024, Joe Biden will be the president in 2025.”

While DeSantis has emerged in opinion polls as the clear second-place contender against Trump, Christie’s allies believe that a large swath of the GOP electorate is still looking for someone else and that the support for DeSantis is soft, particularly after the Florida governor emerged as a less agile candidate than some in the party had expected.