Chris Christie: Musk’s Influence Will End ‘When Trump Believes that Something Has Gone Wrong’ and He Needs Someone to Blame

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
KARL: “And let’s bring in former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie. Governor Christie, look. You know what it’s like to be part of Donald Trump’s inner circle. You were in the inner, inner circle 2016 through 2020, but I want to ask you about Musk. He’s practically moved into Mar-a-Lago, and my first question to you is, this is the wealthiest guy in the world. What is in it for him? Why has he become so attached to Trump?”

Christie: “It’s hard for folks to understand how intoxicating this can be for some people, but for Elon Musk, he doesn’t stand in front of 20,000 people and have them chant his name. No matter how rich he is, which is what was happening to him on the campaign trail.”

KARL: “Unless he’s with Trump.”

Christie: “That’s right. On a regular basis in front of Trump’s crowds and I’ll tell you a quick story about Donald Trump himself in 2016, experiencing this for the first time. I was on the plane with him, and he would typically have this box of documents from Trump Tower from the real estate business that his body guy, Keith, would bring to him once the plane took off, and Trump opened the box, looked at a couple of the pages and he turned to me, and he held some of the papers up and he said — he said, Chris. He said, who gives a damn about any of this stuff once I have been involved in your business? And I think that Musk is experiencing the same thing. Setting off rockets are great. Electric vehicles are cool. Some of the other stuff he’s doing, but it’s not what he’s experiencing right now.”

KARL: “And right at the center of power and attention and all of that.”

Christie: “Yep.”

KARL: “How much influence does he really have on Trump? How much is he steering what Trump is doing?”

Christie: “In the beginning, anybody who plays this role for Trump, and you can go through the last eight years, Jon, and there have been different people who played this exact role for Trump. It’s different because it’s Elon Musk, but when you initially begin in that role, you have enormous influence, and he loves having you around and he loves listening to you, and you’re the best thing in the world. It will always decline, and that’s what happens, and you’ll see it. It’ll happen with Elon Musk too. I used to say this to general Kelly when he first became chief of staff. Today you’re trading at 1 hundred cents on the dollar. You’ll trade at zero. The question is how long it will take.”

KARL: “Certainly the case with Kelly. That’s the question everybody is asking. How long does Musk last? I’ve heard some people say he’s going to be with him at least through the midterms because he’s going to be such a force in funding the Republican campaigns, but how long do you think — when does this end?”

Christie: “It ends when Trump believes that something has gone wrong, and he needs someone to blame, and Musk becomes the person to blame, and no one knows how long that will take. You know, look. Our colleague, Reince Priebus, it was five months, and then he was gone. General Kelly, it was 18 months. You know, the people who sit at the very center with Trump have a shelf life, and that shelf life is influenced by outside events. As Speaker Johnson is finding out right now, this is a guy who’s done everything Trump’s asked him to do. He’s essentially gotten down on one knee to Trump on a regular basis, and now we have this problem this week. You watch. Trump will run from him because that’s what he does.”

KARL: “And the fact that Trump made this demand and he didn’t get what he wanted, those Republicans defied him, he said he was going to primary, you know, challenge these guys in primaries. What happens? Does he just move on from that?”

Christie: “Of course, he does because he’s going to have other things he needs to do, and guess what? He’s back to the real world, Jon. When you are not the president and you’re just shooting orders from Mar-a-Lago, that’s one Now that you’re going to be the president again, and you have to actually get things done, he’s going to have to work with these people, and the king of debt, which is what Donald Trump has called himself over eight years.”

KARL: “Right.”

Christie: “There’s a lot of people like Chip Roy, probably the best example, and others, who say, and I agree that this debt in this country has gotten completely out of control, and they want to use the debt ceiling as a moment to try to make government smaller. Donald Trump doesn’t care about that, Jon, and it’s going to be interesting to watch how that interplay happens.”