Christie says Rubio, GOP ‘all bend the knee’ by defending Trump’s NATO threats

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is criticizing Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and others in the Republican Party for defending former President Trump’s recent comments about NATO, saying they “all bend the knee” to the former president.

Christie, a former Trump supporter who launched a primary bid against him as one of the only candidates to denounce the former president before dropping out last month, joined the “Pod Save America” podcast this week, where he said it is “typical” of conservative politicians to defend Trump after the 2024 front-runner said he would openly encourage Russian aggression against NATO allies who were behind on their defense payments.

“This is typical of what everybody on the Hill, just about everybody on the Hill is doing, which is, as Trump himself said in talking about [Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.)], ‘They all bend the knee,’” Christie said in the podcast. “And that’s what Marco Rubio is doing.”

Rubio dismissed Trump’s remarks Sunday and said he is confident he knows what the former president will do when it comes to NATO, should he be reelected.

Trump has expressed his concerns with countries that do not contribute equally to NATO, which Rubio said is a sentiment shared by past presidents.  

“He’s not the first American president — in fact, virtually every American president at some point in some way has complained about other countries in NATO not doing enough,” Rubio said in an interview with CNN. “You know, Trump’s just the first one to express it in these terms.”

Christie said he knows Rubio and thinks he is “much smarter than that comment, and it is just him being compliant.”

As a rematch between Trump and President Biden looks likely, Christie previously said that he is not voting for the former president “under any circumstances.” He said the only thing that keeps him “feeling even slightly OK” is that the Trump era of politics will “be over sometime soon.”

“It’ll either be over in November when Donald Trump loses the general election, or it’ll be over in four years,” he said. “But one way or the other it’s gonna be over, and all these things that people like Marco and Ted and Elise Stefanik and all these others are saying, they’re gonna have to own it.”

“And it’s gonna be, I think, a very, very rude awakening for all of them,” Christie continued.