The Scoop
Former New Jersey governor and two-time failed presidential candidate Chris Christie will teach a “How to Run a Political Campaign” class at Yale University this fall.
The course examines political campaigns’ increasing dependency on technology, fundraising, and successful leadership. Yale students will receive one college credit for the weekly 1-hour, 50-minute class, according to the description.
“Political campaigns in the 2020s are becoming more technology dependent, more confusing and difficult from a communications perspective and even more fraught with pitfalls and personal challenges,” the class description reads.
The course is a 15-person seminar for graduate and undergraduate students, a Christie adviser said.
Know More
Christie’s last unsuccessful attempt to secure the Republican nomination for president ended in January, days before the Iowa caucuses after it became painfully obvious he had no pathway to victory.
“Campaigns are run to win. That’s why we do them. It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination,” he said at the time during an event in New Hampshire. “I’m going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again. And that’s more important than my own personal ambition,” he added.
His dramatic departure from the race was punctuated with a hot mic flub where he was heard saying then-candidate Nikki Haley was “going to get smoked.”
During Christie’s Trump-themed candidacy, he was the Republican Party’s most ardent critic of Donald Trump, calling him “disgusting” during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper after Trump said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Christie also criticized Trump for having an “awful temperament” when discussing a court-issued gag order handed down by Judge Tanya Chutkan. “His conduct is beneath the offices that he was privileged to hold,” he said.
Notable
Before he announced his bid, Christie sat down with Semafor for an hour-long interview in which he said Ron DeSantis and Trump weren’t conservatives and undercut some of Trump-world rhetoric about a rigged 2020 election. “The election wasn’t stolen. He lost,” Christie said.
Anti-Trump Republicans are calling on Christie to support Kamala Harris. “The only possible world in which he has a future in politics is: (1) As a token Republican in a Democratic administration; or (2) as a GOP candidate for president from the blue state of New Jersey following a thrashing of Trump so massive and undeniable that it shakes the entire party to its core and creates space for someone who can ride his repudiation of Trump to the nomination,” The Bulwark’s Tim Miller wrote.