As a wise man once said, “You come at the king, you best not miss.” Unfortunately for Chris Christie, he failed to take in this important lesson from The Wire. During Wednesday night’s debate, he bungled his shot at Donald Trump, the king of stupid-yet-searing nicknames, by attempting to label him “Donald Duck.” Now Christie is adding to his humiliation by doubling down on the cringey moniker and pretending the Disney-inspired insult has Trump running scared.
Christie’s entire dubious GOP primary strategy revolves around being the one candidate willing to forcefully take on Trump, so it’s no surprise that he came to the debate in Simi Valley, California, with a canned line about the former president. But no one was expecting him to call out Trump for refusing to show up to the GOP debates with a joke this weak:
Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself … You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on this stage and defending your record. You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here’s gonna keep calling you Donald Trump anymore; we’re gonna call you Donald DUCK.
The line wasn’t received well in the room or online, and Trump quickly put the final nail in the Donald Duck coffin, quipping to Fox News Digital shortly after the debate, “Anybody that would come up with that nickname shouldn’t be running for president.”
Christie could have cut his losses and moved on. Instead, he kept trying to make Donald Duck happen. After the debate, he tweeted out video of the line (minus the awkward response from the crowd) and added the variation “keep duckin”:
Then Christie kicked off a Thursday-morning appearance on Fox News by scoffing at Trump’s nicknaming track record — despite his coining the effective schoolyard jabs “Low-Energy Jeb,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Liddle Marco” — and asserting, “I live in his head.”
The idea that Christie — who once bragged that Trump forced him to eat meat loaf at the White House — is terrorizing the 2024 GOP front-runner is laughable. Also ridiculous: Christie thinking this response was worth promoting on social media:
Somehow, this is even more embarrassing than when Christie was beefing with Trump over whether the former president really called him fat.
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