Chris Christie is going to use all the ammunition he has to make sure Donald Trump takes part in the GOP primary debates that the former president has threatened to avoid.

“I will shame him into showing up,” Christie told Bari Weiss during an episode of her Honestly podcast posted Thursday, according to HuffPost.

He added that Trump “owes it to his voters and to all the voters in the Republican Party to show up at those debates.”

The former New Jersey governor is completely right here. Trump owes it to voters to show up, especially as his legal problems continue to pile up. If he doesn’t show up, it looks like he has something to hide, which of course, he always does, and the moderator has every right to ask him questions.

Christie told Weiss he knows Trump will complain about having to appear with the other candidates and that he’ll say things like “Oh, it’s not fair. It’s not fair to me. I’m so far ahead. Why should I let people talk about me?”

“Because you decided to run for president. That’s why,” Christie replied bluntly.

But Christie predicts that Trump will show up due to his sizable ego.

“You have to engage in this stuff and the American people, and the Republican Party voters have a right to hear you and to compare you side by side with the other people offering themselves,” he said. “So we’ll continue to make that argument. And quite frankly, I think he’ll show up ’cause I don’t think his ego will permit him not to.”

Christie launched his presidential bid earlier this month by saying he hopes to convince Republicans just how unsuitable Trump is for office.

And not long after entering the race, Christie zeroed in on Trump, blasting him for being a “petulant child,” and for his “grifting” family. Oh, and for being “the cheapest SOB I’ve ever met in my life.”

Well, Christie certainly has a way with words. And he’s not wrong.

And while the former governor has gone ballistic on Trump, he says he has some misgivings about the GOP debates. The Republican National Committee has been telling candidates they must sign a loyalty pledge backing whoever becomes the party’s nominee in order to qualify for the first debate, which will be held on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. He and fellow candidates Asa Hutchinson (the former Governor of Arkansas) and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd have objected to the pledge because it could support them to support Trump.

Frankly, this sounds like a stunt the RNC would pull because so many Republicans still bow to the Temple of Trump.

So it’s completely understandable that Christie has called the pledge a bad idea (because it is). He says his goal is “to try to save my party and save my country from going down the road of being led by three-time loser Donald Trump.” Earlier he told CNN that he would “take the pledge in 2024 just as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016.”

The RNC wants candidates to get in line behind whoever the party nominates and this leaves no room for disagreement. They want people to believe there’s no room for dissension in politics. They want this in a country that’s already gone full-tilt divided, a country that’s headed right back to the Jim Crow era. A party that wants to keep women barefoot and pregnant.

In other words, a party that’s unfit to lead.

You can listen to Bari Weiss interview Chris Christie here.