Less than a week before the Iowa Caucuses, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced that he was suspending his presidential campaign, CBS News reported.
During an event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Christie said it was clear that he had no path to win the Republican nomination.
The former New Jersey governor who famously threw his support behind Donald Trump after dropping out of the 2016 presidential primaries had, just a week earlier, aired a campaign ad admitting that endorsing Trump had been a mistake.
This time around, Christie launched his primary campaign focused solely on criticizing the former president and making the case against Republican voters nominating Trump again in 2024.
The New Jersey Republican pinned all of his hopes on a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary only to fail to earn the endorsement of Governor Chris Sununu, who instead endorsed former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
While Christie did not reveal if he planned to endorse any of the remaining 2024 candidates, just moments before the event began, he was caught on a hot mic saying Nikki Haley was “gonna get smoked,” and “She’s not up to this.”
Christie’s path after New Hampshire was grim. The longshot candidate has little ground game outside of the Granite State and failed to make the ballot in the Super Tuesday state of Maine.
Republicans eager to prevent another Trump nomination in 2024 had begun calling on Christie to abandon his quixotic campaign and throw his support behind either Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis.
Governor Sununu told CNN on Tuesday that a vote for Chris Christie would be a vote taken from his preferred candidate Nikki Haley and said Christie’s continued presence in the race would prevent Republicans from “delivering that loss to the former president.”
Christie told a group of voters in Rochester, New Hampshire on Tuesday that he would happily drop out and endorse whichever candidate is “actually running against Donald Trump.” He said if any of the remaining Republican candidates was “willing to take him [Trump] on,” he would be “happy to work with that person.”
