Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is thinking about another presidential run in 2024, putting him in a head-to-head competition with Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
After appearing on “Real Time” Friday night, he joined the show’s host Bill Maher, CNN anchor Chris Wallace and BBC News correspondent Katty Kay for an “Overtime” talk in which viewers submit questions. The question posed Christie: It’s rumored you’re considering another presidential run in 2024. Is there any truth to that?
“Sure,” Christie said without the slightest hesitation. His answer was so quick that Maher said, “Oh, I love that. I’m telling you, this show’s rubbing off on him. He’s getting very loose.”
“Yeah. That’s me. I never had the reputation of being bold. [I’m a] wallflower type,” Christie joked.
“He should. I mean, why not? Because we need a normal Republican,” Maher said. The host did wonder, however, if Christie had a chance of stealing voters from “the Trump cult.”
“Do you think you could really take the party away from the clutches of the Trump cult as it is now?” Maher asked. “I mean, because even if it’s not Trump, it’s going to be a Trumper.”
Christie didn’t seem to be at all concerned. “I’d like to see what happens in the midterms,” he said. “I think, you know, all I heard in 2016 was that, ‘We’re going to do so much winning that we’re going to be tired of winning’ and we’re going to ask him not to win anymore. And then we lost the House and the Senate in ’18; we lost the presidency in ’20; we lost two Senate seats in Georgia in ‘20. A lot of losing.”
He added confidently, “I think they might want to go back to winning again.”
Watch the video clip at the top.
Christie announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election in June 2015 and dropped out of the race after the New Hampshire primary eight months later when he received only 7.4% of the overall vote in the state. Although Christie had harsh criticism for Trump while he competed for the candidacy, after he left the race, he endorsed Trump and was named to head a transition team in the event of a Trump presidency. At one point, he was even considered a potential vice presidential running mate.
Four years later, Christie turned on the former president and joined in on the calls for impeachment before Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration. “What we had was an incitement to riot at the United States Capitol. We had people killed, and to me there’s not a whole lot of question here,” Christie told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think if inciting to insurrection isn’t [an impeachable offense], I don’t really know what it is.”
He added that he would vote in favor of removing Trump from office.
