Trump Will Likely Sign Pledge to Support GOP Nominee: Chris Christie

GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie said Sunday that he expects former President Donald Trump to sign the Republican National Committee’s pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee—even as Trump continues to refuse to do so.

“I would not be the least bit surprised if sometime around Sunday or Monday of next week, that he signs the pledge and he shows up on the stage on Wednesday,” the former New Jersey governor said to Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.”

Trump has balked at signing the pledge ever since the RNC made it one of the requirements to take part in the first primary debate, which will be held in Milwaukee on August 23.

“I wouldn’t sign the pledge,” Trump said in a Newsmax interview on Wednesday. “Why would I sign a pledge if there are people on there that I wouldn’t have?” The frontrunner Republican candidate went on to criticize Christie, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson by name.

At the same time, Trump said he’d “like to” participate. “I’ve actually gotten very good marks on debating talents,” he said. “But you want to be, you know, they want a smart president. They want somebody that’s going to be smart. So we have to do the smart thing.”

The former president famously refused to agree to endorse the eventual GOP nominee in 2015. He later signed a loyalty pledge, and then revoked it once he took a commanding lead.

On Sunday, Christie argued that Trump’s primary motivation in dangling his participation over the debate is to keep attention laser-focused on him and his campaign. “This is about Donald Trump keeping the attention on Donald Trump, and he’s doing pretty well,” Christie said, adding that Trump’s comments about the debate amount to “nonsensical theater.”

Asked whether he thought the RNC would forbid Trump from taking part in the stage if he refused to agree to their terms, Christie acknowledged, “They are serious about wanting this pledge signed.”

Faced with withering criticism from candidates like Christie and Hutchinson, RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has defended the pledge. “It’s the Republican Party nomination, and the pledge is staying and anybody who wants to seek the nomination of our party should pledge to support the voters,” she said last month.

For his part, Christie told Karl on Sunday that he had not yet been presented with the pledge. He speculated that was because the RNC was still verifying that he’d collected enough individual donors to meet the debate’s threshold requirement.

RNC rules require that candidates show over 40,000 unique donors with at least 200 donors in 20 unique states, in addition to polling over 1% in three qualifying national polls (or two national and one early nominating state poll) to make the stage. According to Politico, Trump, Christie, DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum have all passed those thresholds.

At the end of Christie’s interview, Karl asked him whether he thought the pledge should include “a little caveat” allowing candidates to revoke their support if the nominee is a convicted felon. “Who knows? Maybe it will, Jon,” Christie replied. “We’ll see how it develops over the next week or so.”