Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie suggested to an audience on Monday that he may enter the 2024 presidential race to torpedo former President Donald Trump.
Christie made the remarks while speaking at St. Anselm’s College in New Hampshire. Christie campaigned in New Hampshire more than any other GOP candidate in 2016 and was blown out there, leading him to suspend his campaign.
“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco because that’s the only thing that’s gonna defeat Donald Trump,” Christie said in reference to him going hard after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) during the debates. “And that means you gotta have the skill to do it and that means you have to be fearless because he will come back and right at you.”
Christie said that “it’s not gonna end nicely” and Trump’s “end will not be a calm and quiet conclusion.”
“And so, if I run again, I can’t imagine that I would continue to do it the same way,” he added. “But this time if I run, I would just hope that you come to a better conclusion than you did the last time.”
Mediaite reported that Christie’s remarks “elicited laughs from the crowd.”
The former president and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis currently sit at the top of the polls for the 2024 Republican nomination, even though the latter has not announced a campaign yet.
Christie told Fox News that he wanted to go to New Hampshire to talk to people “who I know are the best-informed voters in the country about things that I think are important in the world and in our country right now — and to see how they react to that, and see that what they think about things that I think are important.”
Christie said though that he has not made any plans on whether to join the race but added that he has “had a lot of interesting conversations with donors over the course of the last few weeks.”