Chris Christie confronts 'View' host for 'insulting' suggestion his voters would 'waltz over to Nikki Haley'

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Chris Christie confronts 'View' co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin over 'insulting' suggestion his supporters would flee to Haley

GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie joined the hosts of "The View" on Wednesday and called out co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin over her suggestion that his supporters would support Nikki Haley if he dropped out.

GOP presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made clear to the hosts of "The View" on Wednesday his supporters wouldn't necessarily go to Nikki Haley if he dropped out.

"The View" co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin told Christie that she would love to vote for him in the Republican primary, but asked him why he wouldn't put his full weight behind Haley, whom Griffin had said she would support in the primary the day before, to consolidate support, "knowing how dangerous" former President Donald Trump is. 

Christie said Haley couldn't beat Trump, "because she doesn't want to," and quoted a South Carolina politician he recently spoke to saying Haley would "eat glass" to be Trump's vice president. 

Griffin referenced recent polling and suggested Haley could come out ahead of Trump in New Hampshire if she had Christie's margin of voters. 

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GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie joined the hosts of "The View" on Wednesday to discuss the 2024 election and the GOP primary field. (Screenshot/ABC/TheView)

"Wouldn't that still be a better gambit for democracy to have Nikki Haley as the nominee?" Griffin asked. 

"And how insulting to my voters that you would think that they would immediately just waltz over to Nikki Haley, even though Nikki Haley has called Donald Trump ‘the right president for the right time,’" he said. 

Christie mockingly called out Haley for saying, as he paraphrased, "For some reason, chaos and drama" follow Trump wherever he goes. 

"That’s like an arsonist saying, ‘For some reason, burning buildings follow me wherever I go.’ Chaos and drama, and you know this, and I know it, follow him because that’s what he does," Christie said.

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Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a town hall campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire, on, Dec. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

"The View" co-host Sunny Hostin told Griffin on Tuesday that she shouldn't support Haley in the primary. 

The co-hosts discussed backlash against Haley over her answer to a question about what caused the Civil War, which did not initially include mentioning slavery. Haley addressed the backlash shortly after and said slavery was the "first thing" she should have mentioned.

Hostin, who once accused Haley of being a "chameleon" by suggesting the former U.N. ambassador tried to hide her Indian ethnicity, groaned and said, "No," after Griffin said she would still support Haley in the primary.

Later in the same segment she said, "You can't support her, you're rational!" 

Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie participates in the first debate of the GOP primary season hosted by FOX News at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee on Aug. 23, 2023. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

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Christie has ramped up his criticism of Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., for not targeting the former president. 

"My point that I’ve been trying to make about Nikki is just pretty simple. You can’t be running against Donald Trump and then say he was the right president for the right time," Christie told Fox News in early December. "You can’t be trying to cuddle up to Trump at the same time you’re running against him."

Fox News' Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.