Presidential candidate Chris Christie derided former President Donald Trump’s ability to handle China as a national security threat and economic competitor to the United States, saying the former president would treat China “with greetings and love letters”.
The former New Jersey governor recalled Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea and its President Kim Jong Un in 2018 and claimed Trump would be too weak on China.
“You can count on Trump to handle China like he handled North Korea. With greetings and love letters, ” Christie tweeted on Sunday with a photo of Trump saluting a North Korean general, a moment in 2018 that drew backlash from opponents of the former president.
Christie also referenced Trump’s correspondence with Kim in which Trump called the North Korean president’s letters “beautiful” and joked that the two leaders “have fallen in love.”
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“I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth,” Trump said at a 2018 rally. “And then we fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me some nice letters, and they are big letters. We fell in love.
“Get real,” Christie added in her tweet.
Christie has become the most vocal critic of Trump in the GOP presidential arena and he has argued that he is the best-placed Republican candidate to take on China.
“I think people who know me know that there will be no confusion from (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping) when I am President of the United States, about what American policy is, and that every day we will fight to make America the winner of this competition against China,” Christie told CBS News “Face the Nation” in June.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chris Christie says Trump would give China ‘greetings and love letters’