Chris Christie, Bill Hemmer Argue Over Whether Trump Is To Blame For Border Issues

Fox News’ Bill Hemmer sparred with former Republican New Jersey Gov. and 2024 Republican candidate Chris Christie on Wednesday after Christie suggested former President Donald Trump is to blame for the border.

Christie launched his bid for the nomination in early June, saying he intended to directly take on Trump. Christie, once a supporter of Trump, has been critical of the former president since the 2020 election.

Christie was asked about Republican support for the former president in light of his arrest Tuesday, with the former governor arguing that Republicans should be concerned about a weaponized justice system but also may not want Trump back in office. (RELATED: Chris Christie Says Trump Would Spend Second Term ‘Settling Scores’)

“I’m looking at these polling numbers and he’s crushing it,” Hemmer said. “Here’s one from June 5th through the 9th … Suffolk University, Trump is at 48%. Others have him well over 50%. I saw one poll with him at 61%, and you’ve gotten into this campaign saying that you’re going to be the biggest critic that Donald Trump has but I look at these numbers, and I wonder, do Republican primary voters want a critic?”

“I think they want a campaign,” Christie argued. “We’re going to make a case that we’ve done nothing but lose since Donald Trump has been the leader of this party. Nothing but lose, 2018 we lost the House, 2020 we lost the White House and the Senate, 2022 we lost two more governorships, another senate seat and we barely took the House of Representatives against Joe Biden who is the most incompetent president I’ve ever seen since Jimmy Carter. This is a failure of leadership by Donald Trump. He picked most of those candidates who lost. And he’s led us down a path of losing and what are the ramifications for that? Record inflation, botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, sending the country into an educational tailspin because we’re excluding parents from their children’s education.”

“The border – by the way, [Trump’s] policies did much better on everything that you just mentioned,” Hemmer cut in.

“Wait a second Bill, his policies did not do better at the border, ok? At the border, we had a diminution of what we’re seeing now,” Christie argued.

Hemmer then argued that Trump will likely say that Biden stopped his policies, which led to the current crisis.

“I would say one of the things that President Trump did that Biden doesn’t is support the border patrol, the men and women who are on the ground there,” co-host Dana Perino jumped in.

The Biden administration has experienced record-breaking numbers of migrant encounters at the southern border, with the number skyrocketing from over 450,000 encounters by Customs and Border Protection in 2020 to over 1.7 million in 2021 and over 2.3 million in 2022, statistics show.

The Biden administration ended the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy in 2022 after initially ending the policy upon Biden taking office.