NEW YORK — (CNN) New Jersey Governor and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie appeared on “The Tonight Show” Monday night.
Christie, a return guest and frequent target of some of Jimmy Fallon’s barbs, showed an easy rapport with the host, armed with an amusing anecdote about his New Hampshire visit with the Romneys and the Rubios and joking about the upcoming CNN GOP presidential debate. He also took a couple lighthearted shots at GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
Declaring he was “fired up” to be on the show, the 2016 candidate opened the interview by insisting on participating in one of the show’s notorious lip sync battles. But Christie was quickly shut down after launching into the opening lines of “Born in the U.S.A.” by his famously beloved Bruce Springsteen, with Fallon slamming the buzzer and declaring Christie the winner.
Christie, winking at his slipping poll numbers, quipped, “Wow, my first first place! That’s really good.”
The New Jersey governor also shared a story from his stay at Mitt Romney’s lakeside home in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, over the Fourth of July weekend, during which he was accompanied by fellow 2016 GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio and his family. Christie described a spontaneous boating trip to a local ice cream store gone awry, whereupon arriving at the shop with a small horde of children and grandchildren, he, Romney and Rubio discovered, uncomfortably, that they had forgotten to bring enough money to pay for the crowd’s ice cream demands.
“So Mitt Romney turns to me and he says, ‘By the way, do you have any money?’ Mitt Romney! Right?,” Christie joked. “I said, ‘No, I don’t have any money, I didn’t know we were going for ice cream.’” He continued, “So he turns to Rubio and he says, ‘Do you have any money?’ Rubio goes, ‘I don’t have any money.’”
Then came the punchline: “So…our wives are walking behind us, and finally we hear a voice from behind going, ‘Don’t worry, would-be presidents, I have it handled.’ And it was Ann Romney. She had the money.”
The would-be president also addressed the domination of the crowded 2016 GOP field by Donald Trump during the interview. Asked by Fallon if he had expected Trump’s surge in the polls, Christie sarcastically replied “Oh, no, I completely expected that — didn’t you?”
The governor then teased the GOP frontrunner over his notorious self-confidence, breaking into his best Trump impression to add, “Of course. Everything he does is fabulous, spectacular, wonderful, amazing.”
Later in the interview, Christie discussed his performance in the first GOP presidential debate and his plans for the second debate, scheduled to take place on CNN on September 16.
Complaining about the lack of opportunities to speak, he noted that during the first debate “There was one point where I went twenty questions in a row without being asked a question. And that’s hard.”
“I’m standing up there next to Marco Rubio and we’re looking at each other and going, ‘Are we still here?’”
But Christie promised to make his presence felt at the second debate. “By the way, stay tuned on September 16th. We may be changing tactics. If I go — if I get to fifteen questions in a row — count them at home — if I get that fifteen in a row, they’re gonna go ‘Uh-oh, he’s going nuclear now,’” adding “if I turn green and get the hulk thing going.”
The second GOP presidential debate will take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Fingers crossed for an appearance by the hulk.
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