"Outnumbered" co-host and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday that Chris Christie should brush up on his messaging ahead of his expected entry into the 2024 White House race next week.
Christie, 60, reportedly plans to announce his candidacy for president in New Hampshire, joining an increasingly crowded field of Republican presidential hopefuls.
The former New Jersey governor and vocal Trump critic intends to strike a "joyful" and "authentic" tone as a presidential candidate, his team told Axios, adding that he hopes to personify a "happy warrior who speaks his mind, takes risks and is happy to punch Donald Trump in the nose." Christie's team said he will focus on a "more hopeful note" than some of his Republican competitors, to appeal to "America's "exhausted majority," Axios reported.
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Discussing his upcoming announcement on "The Story" Thursday, McEnany said Christie's messaging begs the question, "Who are you trying to win here?"
"He intends to be a happy warrior and joyful, he said 'I will never vote for Trump under any circumstance.' It causes me to ask, who are you trying to win here?" she said.
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"Because you’re going to not shut up about maybe like .01 percent of primary voters in a Republican primary with that type of language. You may win some Democrats. But it certainly won’t get you to the general," McEnany continued. "So for Chris Christie, he plans on prosecuting this case on a debate stage. But I don’t see that it behooves him in any way in a primary."
Former President Trump remains the overwhelming front-runner in the early GOP presidential nomination polls after launching his third straight White House run in November. Christie stands at less than 1% support in the latest Fox News national poll in the race for the Republican nomination.
With Trump holding a sizable lead, McEnany said his GOP competitors should be focussed on poll "movement" to narrow the gap with the former president ahead of the first primary debate this summer.
"You pray for the big ‘M word,’ movement," she said. "But the debate stage, with probably 20 million people on that evening in August, that’s where things can get shaken up."
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Christie, who held New Jersey's highest office from 2010-2018 and was the deep-blue state's last Republican governor, first ran for president in the 2016 cycle. In 2016, he placed all his chips in New Hampshire, but his campaign crashed and burned after a disappointing and distant sixth-place finish in the state. He was far behind Trump, who crushed the competition in the primary, boosting him towards the nomination and eventually the White House.
Christie joins a field that also includes former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former two-term Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, multimillionaire entrepreneur and conservative commentator Vivek Ramaswamy, and Michigan businessman Perry Johnson. Former Vice President Mike Pence and South Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are expected to enter the race in the coming weeks, and Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire is also seriously mulling a 2024 bid.
Fox News' Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
