Christie defends his White House bid after Sununu criticism

CNN —

Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie on Tuesday pushed back on New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s recent suggestion that his campaign has no path forward.

“Since Chris started to work for Nikki Haley and become an employee of Nikki Haley, it’s not the same Chris Sununu anymore,” Christie, who has been friends with Sununu for more than a decade, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360.”

“Chris Sununu was one of the most vocal Donald Trump critics in this country,” he said, later adding, “This is a guy who has said that Donald Trump is unfit. All things that his candidate is unwilling to say” and accusing Sununu of abandoning “his principles to try to get himself some political favor inside of his own state.”

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The comments from Christie come as GOP presidential hopefuls seek to distinguish themselves in the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses. On Sunday, Sununu, who has endorsed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, suggested the former New Jersey governor’s White House bid had reached a “dead end” and that he should drop it.

Christie told Cooper that he thinks Sununu chose to endorse Haley “based on a set of polling at that moment,” asking: “What indications does he have that she wants to beat Donald Trump?”

“By the way, how does Chris Sununu defend what she said on Civil War? I don’t understand it,” he continued, leaning into criticism of Haley’s failure to mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War at a New Hampshire town hall and subsequent effort to clean up her answer.

Representatives for Sununu declined