Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said this month that President Donald Trump does not truly believe the false claims he has repeated for years about the 2020 election being stolen. Speaking at Harvard Kennedy School, Christie said he was present during the 2020 race and argued Trump knew he had lost.
“The crap that Donald Trump put out there about the 2020 election is fiction,” Christie said at the event, according to published accounts and video excerpts. He went further, saying Trump “doesn’t even believe it” and “thought he lost,” describing the former president’s narrative as “make-believe.”
Christie’s remarks came as Trump and his allies continue to cast doubt on U.S. election systems ahead of the 2026 midterms. In late March, Trump signed an executive order targeting mail voting, a move that immediately drew lawsuits and criticism from election experts and voting-rights groups who argue the White House has limited authority over how states administer elections.
That dispute has kept Trump’s long-running rhetoric about voting by mail in the spotlight. Even as he has repeatedly attacked the method, mail voting remains legal nationwide, widely used, and a central part of election administration in many states. Opposition to Trump’s latest order has also spread beyond civil-rights groups, with postal workers launching a public campaign defending mail ballots after the administration’s action.
Christie, once one of Trump’s most visible Republican allies, has become one of his sharper critics. His latest comments are notable because they do not merely challenge Trump’s claims on the facts; they challenge Trump’s sincerity, suggesting the former president’s fraud narrative was political theater from the start.
The backdrop is familiar. After the 2020 election, Trump tried to overturn his defeat through pressure campaigns and legal challenges, including his now-infamous call urging Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse the result. The federal election–interference case tied to those efforts was later dismissed after Trump won the 2024 election, with prosecutors citing the Justice Department’s policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
