With Wednesday nights Republican National Committee debate potentially the last one of the 2024 primary season, the criminally charged former president may have notched one key victory: avoiding getting filleted onstage by Chris Christie.

The former New Jersey governor created the most memorable moment of the 2016 Republican primary debates when he humiliated Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on a New Hampshire debate stage, and he had promised he would do the same to Trump.

But Donald Trump skipped all four of the contests without suffering in the polls, and the RNC has no current plans for a fifth debate meaning Christie might never get the chance to confront Trump about his Jan. 6 coup attempt, his failure to build a wall along the southern border or even his choice to knowingly infect Christie and others with COVID in late 2020.

Trumps campaign staff did not respond to HuffPost queries. Top aide Chris LaCivita had previously told HuffPost that Trump does not spend any time at all worrying about Christie.

Christie has for months been arguing that Trump fears a face-to-face encounter with him.

Obviously, hes afraid. Hes afraid to get on the stage against people who are serious, Christie said in a May radio interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

A failure to host any further debates would break from the RNCs pattern in 2016, when it held a total of 12, with seven taking place in the first three months of 2016 to coincide with voting in the early primaries and caucuses.

Democracy demands transparency and accountability. Trump has avoided both, but not without the help of the GOP, said Jennifer Horn, a former chair of the New Hampshire state Republican Party , who blamed RNC chair Ronna McDaniel for tacitly helping Trump.

While avoiding the debate stage, where he could be confronted about his past crimes and dictatorial plans for the future, hes been campaigning on a message of authoritarianism and the destruction of the Constitution. All the while, Ronna is out there expressing the support of the party for him, regardless, Horn said.