(NewsNation) — Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a current 2024 Republican presidential hopeful, visited Ukraine on Friday and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Christie, who has positioned himself as a foil to legally-embattled former President Donald Trump in the GOP field, was in Ukraine for “a fact-finding mission to assess the effectiveness of U.S. military aid to Ukraine,” according to The Washington Post.
Christie, 60, announced his second White House run in early June at a town hall event in New Hampshire. Since then, he’s been quick to take on not just Trump, but other GOP firebrands as well. He took aim at fellow 2024 contender Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his state’s new Black history curriculum which suggested slaves learned valuable “skills.”
“DeSantis started this fire with the bill that he signed, and now he doesn’t want to take responsibility for whatever is done in the aftermath of it,” Christie said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “And from listening and watching his comments, he’s obviously uncomfortable.”
In a late July Economist/YouGov poll, the proportion of Republicans who said they didn’t know enough to express an opinion of a particular candidate stood at 21% for Christie.