‘Mexico Hasn’t Given Us One Peso’: Chris Christie Blasts Trump’s Handling of the Border

Republican White House candidate Chris Christie continued pushing his anti-Donald Trump platform in a Wednesday Fox News appearance, at one point blasting the former president for his handling of the southern border.

Christie and host Bill Hemmer agreed the current border situation is “ridiculous,” but when Hemmer said Trump was better than President Joe Biden on the issue, the 2024 hopeful and former New Jersey governor pushed back.

“Wait a second, Bill. His policies did not do better at the border,” Christie said of Trump.

Christie noted one of the main platforms Trump ran on in the 2016 presidential election was the construction of a physical border wall that would eventually be paid for by Mexico.

“We got a wall that’s about a quarter of the way done and Mexico hasn’t given us one peso yet,” the former New Jersey governor said. “So Donald Trump in 2016 was the guy who had no record, so he couldn’t be examined in a very specific way. He now said he was going to do that with immigration. And by the way, he had Congress for the first two years fully controlled by the Republicans. Not one change in the immigration laws.”

Migrant encounters at the Southern border have increased under Biden compared to Trump. U.S. Custom Border and Protection reported more than 211,000 migrant encounters for April 2023, a 10 percent increase from the previous month and 20 percent increase from the same time the previous year. 

Hemmer argued the situation at the border is more unstable under Biden and unused equipment for a wall can be seen in border states. Christie, who also ran for president in the 2016 GOP primaries, again attacked Trump.

“Those piles of steel have been sitting there since Donald Trump was president. He didn’t get it done,” Christie said. “He couldn’t convince a Republican Congress to fund the wall.”