‘He Thought He Lost’: Former Trump Adviser Chris Christie Says President ‘Doesn’t Even Believe’ His Own Election Lies

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) said President Donald Trump does not actually believe his own lies about the 2020 election.

Christie, a former adviser to Trump, spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government on Monday night, where he was asked whether the U.S. will have free and fair elections this November. Trump has repeatedly made wild and baseless allegations about mail-in voting, even as he has voted by mail on multiple occasions. Last week, Trump signed an executive order attempting to restrict mail-in voting, even though the president lacks authority over state elections.

After losing in 2020, Trump infamously and falsely alleged the election had been rigged against him. It is a falsehood the president repeats, even today.

“We’ve never not had them, so we will have them again,” Christie said. “The crap that Donald Trump put out there about the 2020 election is fiction. It’s make-believe. And by the way, I was there in 2020. He doesn’t even believe it. He didn’t believe it. He thought he lost. And he was afraid he was gonna lose all during that fall. So, it’s all a bunch of make-believe stuff.”

Trump spent weeks after the 2020 election trying to overturn the results by trying to pressure Republican officials in states he lost to somehow undo the final election numbers. In one notorious phone call, he unsuccessfully pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” him the number of votes necessary to win the state. When these efforts failed, Trump held a rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, which ultimately culminated in the deadly Capitol riot.

Trump was later criminally charged in federal court for his attempt to overturn the election, but the charges were dropped after he was elected again in 2024, per a Department of Justice policy barring sitting presidents from being indicted.

Watch above via C-SPAN.

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