Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has experienced two unsuccessful presidential campaigns, will be joining Yale University’s faculty this fall to teach a course on political campaigning. The seminar, titled “How to Run a Political Campaign,” will be offered weekly and is open to both undergraduates and graduate students at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. The course will focus on navigating the complexities of running for office in today’s political environment, the New York Post reported.
“When deciding whether to run for any office all of these issues must be confronted in addition to the core considerations of issue positions, fundraising and the most important question of all: If I do win, what do I want to accomplish and what kind of leader do I want to be?” the course description reads.
Christie served as the Garden State’s governor from 2010 to 2018 and was the US attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008, The Post notes further. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 but withdrew and endorsed Donald Trump. Christie also assisted Trump with debate preparations in 2020 but later distanced himself from the former president, rejecting his claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Christie pursued the Republican presidential nomination once more in 2024 but exited the race in January, just before the Iowa caucuses. He continues to be one of the most vocal critics of Trump within the GOP.
A lot of what Christie campaigned on for the 2024 GOP nomination was equally problematic from a conservative standpoint. Former Trump spokesperson and current Fox News host Kayleigh McEnaney said during an “Outnumbered” segment in June 2023 that Christie’s defense of FBI director Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed, will not go over with the former president’s voters in the primary—and she was right.
Earlier on Fox News, Christie said in reference to Wray’s testimony before a House committee earlier in the day: “I did recommend him to President Trump and I’m proud that I did. Those things they’re talking about today, and the director made this point over and over again, are all things from when Jim Comey, Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch were in charge of the Justice Department — before he got put in charge,” Christie added. “He fired the entire Comey leadership team out of the FBI, they’re all gone.”
“Is it all fixed? Of course, it’s not all fixed. Jim Comey and Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch drastically harmed the Department of Justice and the FBI. And Chris Wray has now spent years fixing that,” Christie said. “What you saw today was an animated and combative FBI director who is defending the men and women who work for him… and do a great job…” He added: “So yeah, I think Chris Wray has done a very good job and I think a lot of the stuff you see today is theater, people trying to raise money for campaigns.”