Global Courant
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is running for the GOP’s presidential nomination, on Sunday called the Republican National Committee’s demand that candidates pledge support for the eventual nominee a “useless idea.”
In a interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Christie said, “I think the pledge is just a useless idea,” after being asked if he would pledge to support Donald Trump, the party frontrunner, even if the former president has been convicted of a crime.
“By the way, in my entire life, we’ve never had to swear Republican primaries,” he said. “You know, we were Republicans. And the idea is that you would support the Republican whether you won or lost. And you didn’t have to ask anyone to sign anything.”
“It’s only in the Donald Trump era that you need someone to sign something on a pledge,” Christie added. “So I think it’s a bad idea,”
A spokesman for the RNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
The RNC requires presidential candidates to pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee if they wish to participate in the GOP’s first primary debate in Milwaukee on Aug. 23.
Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, another Republican contender, have both said they would sign the RNC’s pledge. But both GOP candidates are outspoken critics of Trump and have also criticized the pledge, questioning whether they would follow through on the pledge.
Trump himself has not committed to signing the pledge: “There are probably people I wouldn’t be very happy about supporting them, so we’ll see,” he said in March. NBC News previously reported that the former president is considering skipping the first Republican debates.
In a interview with ABC NewThis month, Christie said he would take the pledge “as seriously as” Trump did in the 2016 election cycle.
“I will be on the debate stage and I will take the promise the RNC puts before me as seriously as Donald Trump did eight years ago,” said Christie, who said Trump “absolutely ignored” the promise in 2016. and was not punished.
Hutchinson indicated in early June that he would sign the pledge, telling NBC News, “I’ll do what we have to do to get the debate going.” But in one interview with Politics said last week he would not vote for Trump if convicted of criminal charges in the classified documents case.
Hutchinson has too urged the RNC to add an addendum to its commitment that absolves signatories from supporting a candidate “found guilty of espionage or a serious crime”.
Other RNC requirements for candidates to qualify for the debate phase include meeting a voting threshold and raising funds from at least 40,000 unique donors, including 200 donors from at least 20 states and territories.
