Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is looking at another presidential run in 2024, putting him in a one-on-one contest with Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
After appearing on “Real Time” Friday night, he is joined by the show’s host Bill Maher, CNN anchor
Chris Wallace and BBC News correspondent Katy for an “overtime” talk in which viewers pose questions. Christie raises the question: It is rumored that you are considering another presidential run in 2024. Is there any truth to that?
“Sure,” said Christie without hesitation. His reply was so swift that Maher said, “Oh, I love that. I’m telling you, this show is taking a toll on him. He’s being too lax.”
“Yeah. That’s me. I’ve never had a reputation for being bold. [I’m a] Wallflower type,” joked Christie.
“He should. I mean, why not? Because we need a normal Republican,” Maher said. However, he wondered if he had a chance to steal voters from the “Trump cult.”
“Do you think you can 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 worried at all. “I want to see what happens in the medium term,” he said. “I think, you know, one thing I heard in 2016 was, ‘We’re going to win so much that we’re going to get tired of winning’ and we’re going to tell him not to win anymore. And then we lost the House and Senate in ’18; we lost the presidency in ’20; we lost two Senate seats in Georgia in ’20. Losing a lot.”
“I think they’ll want to go back to win again,” he added confidently.
Watch the video clip above.
Christie announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election in June 2015 and then dropped out of the race. New Hampshire Primary Eight months later when he got only 7.4% of the total vote in the state. Although Christie had harshly criticized Trump while he competed for the candidacy, after leaving the race, he supported Trump and was nominated to lead a transition team to the Trump presidency. At one point, he was even considered a potential vice presidential running mate.
Four years later, Christie turned to the former president and joined Joe Biden’s impeachment call ahead of his January 20 inauguration. “We had a riot instigating the United States Capitol. We did kill people, and there’s not a lot of questions here for me,” Christie told ABC. George Stephanopoulos, “I think if not to incite rebellion” [an impeachable offense]I really don’t know what it is.”
He said he would vote in favor of removing Trump from office.
