Christie worries about Trump ‘vendetta tour’ in second term

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said in an interview published Wednesday that former President Trump’s “vendetta tour” if he wins a second term at the White House is a “scary thing” for the United States.

Christie, who backed Trump during his 2016 presidential run but then ran against him in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, said his biggest fear is that Trump will go after his enemies from the White House and that no one will be able to stop him.

“There’ll be no one around to put guardrails up, and he will be on the vendetta tour against all enemies that he perceives,” Christie said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And that’s a scary thing for the country.”

Despite those feelings about Trump, Christie said he won’t be voting for President Biden in November.

“I don’t think so, no,” Christe said. “President Biden, in my view, is past the sell-by date. Seriously, look at him. If the American people are stupid enough to nominate these two guys, doesn’t mean I have to be stupid, too.”

He said Biden has not called him to ask for his support. 

“It’s pretty stupid for him not to,” said Christie, who ended his White House run in January after campaigning as the most outspoken anti-Trump candidate in the GOP primary.  

The former New Jersey governor was toying with a possible third-party run with No Labels, a centrist ballot-access organization, but eventually turned down the possibility as he did not see a path forward. 

“Nobody that we put up, including me, got higher than 17 percent. So what happens is [voters] love the idea of someone other than Trump or Biden, but then … once you [put forward an alternative], they don’t want to hear it,” Christie told the Post. “We looked at it pretty closely. There was no path to winning.”