Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie plans to announce next week he’s running for president again.
What You Need To Know
- Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is expected to announce Tuesday that he is running for president again, according to a person familiar with his thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm Christie’s plans
- Christie, who also ran for president in 2016, has been a longtime Trump ally but broke with the former president over his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election
- Christie, who also ran for president in 2016, has been a longtime Trump ally but broke with the former president over his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election
- He has since become one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics
Christie will make the announcement at a town hall Tuesday evening at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, a person familiar with his thinking told The Associated Press.
The timing, which was first reported by Axios, comes after several longtime Christie advisers started a super political action committee to support his expected candidacy.
Christie, 60, will join a growing GOP field that also includes former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, ex-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
Christie, who also ran for president in 2016, has been a longtime Trump ally but broke with the former president over his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.
Christie has since become one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics. Following Trump’s CNN town hall earlier this month, Christie called Trump “a coward” and “a puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Shortly after, the former New Jersey governor told ABC’s “This Week” that he thinks Trump needs a challenger who won’t “cozy up to him.”
The other Republican candidates, Christie said, “hope that he implodes and that if they are nice to him that they’ll inherit his voters. It’s all this like political science classroom theory that they are engaged in, which I think is a losing proposition for any of those candidates.
“You can’t beat Donald Trump by playing bumper pool and hitting it off three cushions and hope it goes in the hole. That’s not the way it works.”
A Quinnipiac University poll released last week found 2% of Republicans or Republican-leaning voters support Christie, well behind Trump’s 56% and DeSantis’ 25%.
Christie served as New Jersey’s governor from 2010-18. He dropped out of the 2016 presidential race after poor showings in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.
