Christie Declares ‘Trump Era Is Over’ and Weighs Third White House Run

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has declared that “the Trump era is over” and confirmed he is seriously considering a third campaign for the White House in 2028, arguing that the Republican Party needs new leadership after its heavy losses in last week’s midterm elections.

Christie, 64, made the remarks in an interview with Politico, The Hill reported on 6 November. He said he would decide whether to run in the coming months, having first said last month that he was open to another campaign. He has set no firm timeline for a final decision.

The former governor, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in 2016 and again in 2024, said voters had punished the party for broken promises and a failure of character, rather than endorsing the programme of the Democrats, who captured the House and won the Senate on 3 November.

A verdict on the midterms

Christie pointed to pledges he said the administration had failed to keep, including ending the war in Ukraine in a day, bringing down grocery prices and draining the swamp. The party, he argued, now needs leaders who can offer a forward-looking message centred on character, with a vision different from simply talking about Donald Trump.

“The Trump era is over,” Christie said. “We need to look forward to new leadership in our party and country.”

He has been one of the president’s most persistent Republican critics since leaving the 2024 race, when his campaign rested almost entirely on opposition to Trump. He withdrew days before the Iowa caucuses, conceding he could no longer see a route to the nomination. He now serves as a contributor to ABC News.

Christie also warned the new Democratic majority against treating the midterm result as a mandate for its most progressive policies. “The country didn’t vote for socialism,” he told the New York Post, cautioning Democrats who misread the election that they could face a similar backlash in two years’ time.

Dismissing Vance — and the early field

Christie was blunt about the early favourite for the Republican nomination, Vice President JD Vance, arguing that in two years Vance would carry what he called “the stink of the Trump administration” and could not win the presidency. He said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in a similar bind over foreign policy, and he has previously named Vance, Rubio and Georgia governor Brian Kemp as the likely front-runners.

The 2028 field is already taking shape on both sides. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has said he will not challenge Chuck Schumer for the Democratic leadership and is instead eyeing a presidential run of his own, while Christie is the most prominent Republican so far to position himself as an alternative to the Trump-aligned wing of the party.

Christie, who served as governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018 and as the state’s US attorney from 2002 to 2008, has noted that Ronald Reagan reached the White House at his third attempt, after running in 1968 and 1976 and winning in 1980. “If I run this time, it’ll be my third time running,” he said. “Reagan got elected on his third time running, so maybe there’s a bit of a charm to that.”

The long odds

Any third campaign would face steep obstacles. Polling averages do not currently list Christie among the leading contenders for the nomination, and he would have to persuade primary voters who rejected his message twice before. His 2016 bid ended with a sixth-place finish in New Hampshire, and his 2024 campaign never gained traction beyond a small base of anti-Trump Republicans.

Christie has argued, however, that the midterm rout has changed the calculation. Republicans entered election day controlling both chambers of Congress and will become the minority in both when the 120th Congress convenes in January. In Christie’s telling, that defeat is proof that the party cannot win by running on the president’s record — and that a candidate willing to break with him openly may finally find an audience.

Whether Republican voters agree is a question he says he will spend the coming months answering. For now, he has made the case plainly: the party, in his view, must move on, and he is ready to lead it if it does.