CLAIM: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie suggested Wednesday that former President Donald Trump “hides behind the walls of his golf clubs” instead of participating in the Republican debate.
VERDICT: FALSE. Trump was not hiding at one of his golf clubs but was in Clinton Township, Michigan, on Wednesday evening, speaking with striking auto workers.
Christie made the claim during the second GOP presidential debate, which took place at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California:
And the inflation that Nikki [Haley] spoke about is absolutely right, and it’s caused by government spending. And that’s why people all across this country are suffering tonight. And yet we don’t get any answers because Joe Biden hides in his basement and won’t answer as to why he’s raising the debt the way he’s done, and Donald Trump, he hides behind the walls of his golf clubs and won’t show up here to answer questions like all the rest of us are up here to answer. He put $7 trillion on the debt. He should be in this room to answer those questions for the people you talk about who are suffering, and if the government closes … it is to the blame of everyone in Washington, D.C., who has failed to do their job. [Emphasis added]
Christie’s claim — that Trump is hiding — is demonstratively false, as Trump was not at one of his golf clubs at Wednesday prime time but was speaking with striking auto workers in Michigan, where he blasted President Joe Biden’s green agenda and courted the union workers by laying out what he described as a “vision for a revival of economic nationalism and our automobile manufacturing lifeblood, which they’re sucking out of our country.”
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“I’ve risked it all to defend the working class from the corrupt political class that has spent decades sucking the life, wealth, and blood out of this country. That’s why I’m here tonight,” Trump said during the address.
He then pitched his vision for a:
…future that protects American labor, non-foreign labor — a future that puts American dreams over foreign profits, and a future that raises American wages, that strengthens American industry, that builds national pride, and that defends this country’s dignity — not squanders it all to build up foreign countries that hate us.
“Under crooked Joe Biden, you have none … of the things we want,” Trump said, and the mention of Biden prompted boos from members of the crowd. Trump mocked Biden for posing for photos at the picket line in Michigan Tuesday, where the 80-year-old stayed for 12 minutes before moving on to an elite fundraiser in the Bay Area.
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“Instead of economic nationalism, you have ultra-left-wing globalism. They hate our country, and the workers of America are getting — putting it very nicely — screwed,” Trump added.
Simply put, Christie’s assertion that Trump skipped the second debate to “hide” at one of his golf clubs instead of facing voters is entirely false.
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