Presidential candidate Chris Christie derided former President Donald Trump’s ability to handle China as a national security threat and economic competitor to the United States, saying the former president would handle China “with salutes and love letters.”
The former New Jersey governor recalled Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea and its president Kim Jong Un in 2018 and claimed Trump would be too weak on China.
“You can count on Trump to handle China just like he handled North Korea. With salutes and love letters,” Christie tweeted Sunday along with a photo of Trump saluting a North Korean general, a moment in 2018 that drew backlash from the former president’s opponents.
Christie also referenced Trump’s correspondence with Kim where Trump described the North Korean president’s letters as “beautiful” and joked the two leaders “fell in love.”
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“I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth,” Trump said at a rally in 2018. “And then we fell in love, OK? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“Get real,” Christie added in his tweet.
Christie has become the most vocal Trump critic in the GOP presidential field and he has argued he is the Republican candidate best fit to take on China.
“I think people who know me know that there will be no confusion on the part of (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping) when I’m President of the United States, about what American policy is, and that every day we will be fighting to make America the winner in this competition against China,” Christie told CBS News “Face the Nation” in June.
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