Fact Check: Christie Claims Trump ‘Hides’ Instead of Debating

Christie made the claim during the second GOP presidential debate, which took place at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California:

And the inflation that Nikki [Haley] spoke about is absolutely right, and it’s caused by government spending. And that’s why people all across this country are suffering tonight. And yet we don’t get any answers because Joe Biden hides in his basement and won’t answer as to why he’s raising the debt the way he’s done, and Donald Trump, he hides behind the walls of his golf clubs and won’t show up here to answer questions like all the rest of us are up here to answer. He put $7 trillion on the debt. He should be in this room to answer those questions for the people you talk about who are suffering, and if the government closes … it is to the blame of everyone in Washington, D.C., who has failed to do their job. [Emphasis added]

Christie’s claim — that Trump is hiding — is demonstratively false, as Trump was not at one of his golf clubs at Wednesday prime time but was speaking with striking auto workers in Michigan, where he blasted President Joe Biden’s green agenda and courted the union workers by laying out what he described as a “vision for a revival of economic nationalism and our automobile manufacturing lifeblood, which they’re sucking out of our country.”