Ron DeSantis’s attacks on Disney and his struggles to bend the entertainment giant to his will show the Florida governor is both not a true conservative and should not be trusted to lead talks with the leaders of China and Russia, a potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination said on Tuesday.
“I’ll tell you this much,” Chris Christie told Semafor. “That’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi [Jinping] and negotiating our next agreement with China.
“Or sitting across from [Vladimir] Putin and trying to resolve what’s happening in Ukraine. If you can’t see around a corner that [Disney chief executive] Bob Iger creates for you, I mean, I don’t think that’s very imposing.”
The former governor of New Jersey also said he would decide on his own presidential bid in “the next couple of weeks”.
Also expected to announce a run soon, DeSantis is former Republican president Donald Trump’s closest polling rival. But DeSantis’s numbers have stagnated and last weekend a major donor said he was pausing support.
DeSantis’s spat with Disney began over its opposition to so-called “don’t say gay” legislation, concerning the teaching of gender and LGBTQ+ issues in public schools. DeSantis retaliated by moving to seize control of self-governing powers long granted to the company. Disney responded with moves to safeguard such powers forever.
On Monday, DeSantis accused Disney of perpetrating a legally unsound “sham”, which he said he would dismantle. He also threatened to build on state-owned land next to Disney World.
“What should we do with this land?” DeSantis said. “Maybe create a state park. Maybe try to do more amusement parks. Someone even said, like, maybe you need another state prison. Who knows? I just think that the possibilities are endless.”
Christie said: “I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative, based on his actions towards Disney.
“Where are we headed here now, that if you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you? To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did. And now all of a sudden here we are participating in this with a Republican governor.”
As well as questioning why DeSantis attacked Disney, Christie blasted how he did it.
“For him … to not have foreseen that Disney was going to do what they did in response, which was to completely take over the millions and millions of acres and the zoning decisions on that … well, I’ll tell you this much: that’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi.”
A pugnacious political performer, Christie ran for the Republican nomination in 2016. He failed to make an impact, other than in a debate in New Hampshire in which he flattened the Florida senator Marco Rubio.
On Tuesday, Christie suggested that if a liberal governor attacked Disney in support of liberal policies Republicans would be outraged, and he added: “Why do you want to punish a place that creates enormous tax revenue, enormous tourism for your state?
“… Everyone should have the freedom in this country to disagree with something that government does. And my job as the leader is to convince a majority of people in my state or my country that the criticism is wrong, not to use the power of government that was given to me by the people to punish someone for that.”
Notwithstanding the fact that he left office under a cloud over the Bridgegate political payback scandal, and with historically low approval ratings, Christie added: “Sometimes in politics you just have to admit that you screwed up and got taken.”
