Midterm Critics Like Vance And Desantis Have No Standing To Chris Christie

JD Vance lacks credibility and Ron DeSantis is a duplicitous lame duck looking for relevance.

That’s the view of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie after the vice president and outgoing Florida governor — two potential rivals in 2028 — offered their own assessments of why Republicans suffered such large midterm losses.

In a phone interview with POLITICO Wednesday, Christie said he is still contemplating whether to run for president in two years. But he said the widespread Republican losses — from his increasingly blue home state to the deep-red south — “show that we need to go into a completely different direction.”

Other Republicans seemed to acknowledge that in the wake of Tuesday’s elections. Vance, for example, broke with President Donald Trump by blaming the results on the Iran war. DeSantis, who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, criticized his party for focusing more on cultural issues than everyday concerns of voters.

But those criticisms are too little, too late, Christie said.

“The vice president to me has no credibility. He’s been sitting in the White House now for the last two years — haven’t heard him say a negative word, you know, until this past Wednesday, and he limited it just to the war in Iran, which is not the only problem we have here,” Christie said.

DeSantis, Christie said, had been an ally of Trump until seeking the presidential nomination, then went back to supporting him.

“Now he wants to be critical. I think the governor is getting ready to leave office, and he’s looking for a way to be relevant,” Christie said. “And I think he looks like he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth.”

Neither the White House nor DeSantis’ office immediately responded to messages seeking comment.

Christie himself was a longtime friend of Trump and supported his presidency until the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He is now weighing a third run for president, a decision he said he would make “in the next few months.”

But with Republicans facing historic losses in traditionally Republican states like Texas and Kansas, it is clearly time to move past Trump, Christie said.

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

That is the case back home in New Jersey. Two of the state’s three Republican representatives — Tom Kean Jr. and Jeff Van Drew — lost to Democrats.

New Jersey’s House delegation was 6-6 prior to the Trump era, but now there will only be one New Jersey Republican in the House of Representatives come 2027.

“If you want to know why we’re 11-1 after 6-6, I got two words for you: Donald Trump,” Christie said. “Incredibly unpopular in the state, and cost us five seats in the Congress.”