Chris Christie quit the 2024 race before a single Republican voted and then watched Trump win the White House in a landslide.
Now the man who called Trump a "death sentence" for the party is eyeing a third presidential run.
What Chris Christie said this week about the Republican base should make every conservative’s blood boil.
The Record That Keeps Following Him
He polled at 2 percent nationally when he quit – the same number as Liz Cheney, who never even entered the race.
Republicans chose Trump anyway.
Now Christie is conditioning a third run on whether Republicans suffer "major losses" six weeks from now – signaling that a bad midterm night would prove the party needs to "change this approach," abandon the America First wing, and hand power back to the establishment voters have been rejecting since 2015.
“Once you go through the thought process of convincing yourself that you can be president, and then the next step that you should be president, that doesn’t leave your brain,” he admitted. “So, the way I look at this is, if I’m going to go back home to my wife and say, ‘I know you may not believe this, but third time is the charm,’ like, I better have a real theory,” he continued. “And what she has said to me is, ‘Chris, I want to see the path.'”
No path existed in 2016.
No path existed in 2024.
Apparently, the Republican base still needs to be told it was wrong.
The Field Christie Is Walking Into
While Christie auditions his theory, the actual 2028 race is already forming around men who read the room a decade ago.
Vice President JD Vance leads national Republican surveys by double digits.
When Sean Hannity asked him about 2028, Vance said he thinks about it – then puts it out of his head, because the American people elected him to do a job and he intends to do it.
“So we’re going to win the midterms, we’re going to do everything that we can to win the midterms, and then after that, I’m going to sit down with the president of the United States and talk to him about it,” Vance said.
https://twitter.com/IanJaeger29/status/2102444477952508136?s=20
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the other name everyone keeps coming back to – a serious foreign policy heavyweight who carries Trump's legacy without carrying Trump's baggage.
However, Rubio recently said he had no plans for 2028.
"I don't know what the future holds, but I have no plans at this time," Rubio said. "I'm not a candidate for anything right now, and I’m 100% focused on my job, and I have to be because I have two jobs.”
Neither Vance nor Rubio spent two presidential campaigns telling Republican voters they were making a mistake.
Christie himself named Vance, Rubio, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp as the likely 2028 frontrunners in a separate interview – which raises the question he can't answer: why would any Republican primary voter choose him over any of those three?
The Base Was Never Waiting for Christie's Permission
Washington, DC establishment types have been predicting the death of MAGA since the escalator ride in 2015.
They were wrong in 2016.
They were wrong in 2020, as Trump added 11 million votes to his first total.
And they were dead wrong in 2024 when Trump won the White House back decisively.
Christie's entire theory of the race was that Republican voters secretly agreed with him – that they were just waiting for someone to give them permission to walk away from Trump.
https://twitter.com/Newsforce/status/2102526352935268776?s=20
They weren't.
They never were.
A third campaign won't teach him what two couldn't.
The base doesn't want a permission slip.
It wants someone who will carry the America First agenda forward – and Vance is already in position to do exactly that.
Sources:
- OAN Staff, "Chris Christie Floats Potential 2028 Presidential Run," One America News, September 22, 2026.
- The Hill Staff, "Christie on 2028 GOP Nominee: Rubio, Vance and Kemp 'Come to Mind Really Quickly,'" The Hill, 2026.
- Free Beacon Staff, "Chris Christie To Drop Out of GOP Race," Washington Free Beacon, January 2024.
- WJLA Staff, "JD Vance Says He Wants to Focus on Midterms Before Discussing a 2028 Presidential Run," WJLA, 2026.
- Newsweek Staff, "JD Vance's 2028 Chances Against Top Democrats," Newsweek, 2026.