WASHINGTON — Former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie declared to The Post that “the Trump era is over” after the GOP’s electoral decimation on Tuesday, but warned Democrats the results don’t mean voters want socialism.
Christie, 64, who has long pushed for the GOP to move past President Trump, believes the midterm bloodbath was a clear rebuke of how Republicans governed under the MAGA boss, rather than a vote of confidence in Democrats.
“I think there’s a very real and serious chance that the Democrats will overplay their hand — that they will misread [the election],” the former Garden State governor told The Post on Wednesday.
“Let me be clear, I do not believe that the voters last night picked Democrats.”
“I think they decided to defeat Republicans for our broken promises and our lack of character,” he went on. “And if Democrats believe that’s a mandate for democratic socialism in America, they’re dead wrong, and they could wind up on the other end of this beating in two years.”
Democrats’ approval rating is underwater by 15.6 percentage points, while the GOP’s approval rating is down by 19 points, according to the RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.
While the party in control of the White House usually takes heavy losses in midterm cycles, the scale of Republicans’ string of defeats in the Nov. 3 election was historically massive.
Democrats are on track to grab their largest House majority since at least 2008 and may have succeeded in locking Republicans out of power in the Senate well into the next decade. Moreover, Democrats’ popular vote margin of victory appears to be their largest since the Watergate era.
Republicans lost so many governors’ offices and state legislatures that progressives might now have an opening to effectively cancel out the Electoral College by getting enough states to commit to giving the popular vote winner in presidential election cycles 270 or more electors.
“Unfortunately, this was really predictable … This is the result of a whole raft of broken promises,” Christie explained, referring to Trump’s 2024 commitments towards staying out of endless wars, ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, bringing down grocery prices, “draining the swamp,” and more.
“The Trump era is over after last night, and the people who are going to lead the party going forward are the ones who will be able to articulate a message that’s forward-looking and different than just sitting around and talking about Donald Trump,” he predicted.
“We need to have a new leader who articulates a new vision, and I think that vision’s got to include how important character is in our nation’s governance.”
Before Trump stormed onto the political scene, Republicans had been mired in something of a civil war between the Tea Party and more moderate factions of the conservative movement. Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped down amid the infighting in 2015.
Trump seemingly leaned on his force of personality to keep that coalition together.
Now that Trump is running into term limits, various factions such as populists in the MAGA faithful are clashing with others like the more traditionalist conservatives.
“These labels don’t matter, and that’s why I think we begin to unite around character once again,” Christie said when asked about those philosophical divisions within the movement.
“I think building around character, knowing right from wrong, ending corruption is a good place to start because that shouldn’t have any ideology attached.”
The former governor pointed to the popularity of Trump’s call to “drain the swamp,” but lamented how numerous cabinet and other high-ranking officials or their family members appeared to score lucrative business deals and enrich themselves during his presidency.
Trump and Christie befriended each other in the early 2000s while the New Jerseyan was serving as US Attorney for New Jersey. Ironically, Christie was Trump’s first major Republican endorsement in the 2016 election cycle, something he later came to regret.
Now he is one of Trump’s loudest critics within the GOP.
Christie also believes Tuesday bodes poorly for Vice President JD Vance’s potential presidential aspirations.
“I don’t think he’s a viable candidate for president because I think in two years he will reek from the stink of Donald Trump and what has happened in his administration, and I don’t think he can win the presidency,” Christie said.
He also mused that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in a political bind “almost as deep as the vice president” because of concerns over “foreign policy misadventures.”
Christie made waves last month by suggesting that he is open to a 2028 presidential run. He told The Post that he has no timeline set for making a decision about that.
“All good minds in our party should be thinking about what our new direction should be. I said I was open to considering running again, and I am,” he said.
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