Judging Freedom - Where Chris Christie wants to take America - Election 2024

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Judge Napolitano sits down with Presidential Candidate, former Gov. Chris Christie. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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do, not just because he's my friend. Governor, it's a pleasure and welcome to the show. Your Honor, thanks for having me. Of course, of course. As we speak, we're all awaiting another shoe to drop, another indictment to come, this time probably from Washington, D.C., which I think will allege that Donald Trump committed felonies in January 6th. You, before you were the governor of New Jersey, were the United States attorney for the District of New Jersey. You ran the second or third largest, and I might say most professional, prosecutorial office in the country. You left it in much better stead than you found it. When you left office, you were the toast of the legal and

judicial community. I know that personally. Prevailing upon your experience as a prosecutor, should Donald Trump, and on the basis of what you know, be indicted for the events of January 6th? Hard one to answer, Your Honor, until I actually see the indictment. Because as you know, having experience in this area, I don't know all the evidence they have. I know what I've seen publicly in terms of, you know, the public actions that Donald Trump engaged in. Certainly, I think that they were morally reprehensible, what he did in every sense from election night 2020 through to January 6th, all of which I think led to the actions that happened on January 6th. But as I did with the classified documents case,

I want to withhold judgment on whether I think it's a good indictment or a bad indictment until I actually see it because as you know, it'll probably be a speaking indictment which means there'll be a lot of detail in there about what evidence they have. I saw Mark Meadows yesterday running away from a reporter into a coffee shop somewhere. What does that tell you?

He's a cooperating witness. That's what it tells me. Because people who go into the grand jury, as you know, are perfectly free to talk about their experience in the grand jury. Only the government can't discuss what goes on in the grand jury. And when you see someone running away like that, that means he's made an agreement with the government, in my view, to not speak outside of the grand jury room or the special counsel's office. So that means

there could be a lot of evidence that we know Mark Meadows would have been privy to, and we know he had a lot of text messages that he turned over to the special counsel during that period. So let's see the indictment, because for instance, let's compare two real quickly. The Manhattan DA's indictment is a joke. Should have never been brought beneath the office he holds and doesn't, you know, comport with what his mission should be. How about the Mar-a-Lago indictment? The Mar-a-Lago indictment, I think, is a very serious one. And in that one, it's not only the fact that Donald Trump kept hundreds of classified documents, and even after 18 months of informal private requests from the government for them to be returned, he denied he had them and refused to return them. And then once there was a search

warrant executed, they found there were over another hundred in addition to the ones who had already been returned. But in addition to that, there's an obstruction case there that I think they make very clear in the indictment regarding his interaction with his own lawyers, the moving of the boxes of documents so his own lawyers couldn't search them. And then allowing his lawyers to make a certification to the government that they had done a diligent search and they had no other documents, and another 111 turn up after the search. So I think that's a much more serious case, a substantial indictment, and one that while Donald Trump is presumed innocent, he has a steep hill to climb against

the proofs I've seen from the government. I don't want to spend too much time on Trump, but I do want to address one more issue with you. You had a very bad taste in your mouth after listening to President Trump on election night. You refer to his behavior as beneath the office of the presidency. Here's a clip of what you recently said, summarizing what you observed on election night 2020. When you stand behind the seal of the president of the United States in the East Room of the White House on election night as president, and you say this election was stolen,

when you have absolutely no evidence to support that it was, the American people are sitting there and thinking, well, he's president. He must know something we don't know. It lends credence to it that it did not deserve or merit. And I think that was so beneath the office. Because the politics were over. The votes were in. This is now you're the president of the United States in the White House,

in your official role, and you tell people it was stolen and it wasn't and it undercuts their confidence in the election. And to me, that was the thing that was so unacceptable, so beneath the office that he was honored to hold that I could no longer be supportive of him. You and I have both known him personally for many years. Do you think he honestly believes the election was stolen or his ego is so enormous he had to convey was prepping him for the debates with Joe Biden, he expressed to me a number of times, starting in August of 2020, how concerned he was that he was going to lose and that it was not going well. And in fact, saying to me, you know, you've got to get me ready for this because I have to do well in these debates. So he knew that this race was going to be very close, and he was concerned that he might lose. And the fact is that on election night, there was no way he could have known that that election was stolen. He had no evidence, but yet he put that in the water right then from the White House. And as you know, millions,

if not tens of millions of people still believe him, despite the fact that there has been no evidence brought forward to prove that it was stolen in one state, let alone the five states that he would have needed to reverse in order to reverse the result. Do you think he's afraid to debate you, Governor? I think he is reluctant to do so. I got to tell you, you could sell tickets to that conference. And listen, the RNC should just do that one. They would get enough money to beat Joe Biden just from that. Look, I think we're going to find out whether he is or he isn't if he shows up on August 23rd.

I've qualified for the debate. I'm looking forward to being on the stage with Brett Baer and with Martha McCallum. And I'm looking forward to, you know, laying out the truth to the Republican primary voters and other Americans who are watching. And I think Donald Trump owes it to the Republican Party and our voters to be there. And I think if he doesn't show up, then we have the answer to your question, Judge. He is scared if he doesn't show up. But I'm going to give him a shot, see if he's going to show up and stand on the same stage with me. And if he does, we'll have an interesting interaction, I'm sure. Where do you stand on the issue of debt, Governor. The Republican House and the slightly Democratic Senate,

but both overwhelmingly voted to allow Joe Biden and Janet Yellen to borrow all the money they wanted. Even Mrs. Pelosi, when she was Speaker of the House, and obviously the Democrats controlled it, insisted on a numerical cap on the borrowing. Janet Yellen went out and borrowed a trillion dollars in the next two or three months. Then she went to China, hat in hand, asking them to buy more bonds. How would you end this endless spiral of debt? You know, as you know, Judge, when I became governor of New Jersey, we had an $11 billion deficit on a $29 billion budget. And there were folks who said that what you had to do is you had to raise taxes in order to fix that problem. And I said no.

And we sat down and we cut, in the New Jersey state budget, 836 individual programs out of the budget in order with other measures to bring it to balance. The only way to stop this, Judge, is to slow down the spending. And I'm, you know, the only one in this race who's dealt with that kind of percentage of budget deficit in their state recognizes how difficult it is to make those decisions because they will not be popular, Judge, when you, every one of those programs has a constituency. But my constituency are our children and grandchildren who will inherit a country that is so riddled with debt if we don't do something. Would you cut, Governor, would you cut the defense budget, bearing in mind we have 903 foreign military, American military installations, and the Defense Department gets $860 billion with a B a year? Do we really need them spending all that money?

Do we really need troops on 900 various locations throughout the world that no one person could even point out? Well, I'll tell you this, Judge. Every bit of the budget will get reviewed for its effectiveness and its necessity when you're going to have to make the kind of cuts we're going to have to make in order to bring us back. So, you know, look, I think it's very important. The single biggest job of the president of the United States is commander in chief and making sure that our military has the readiness it needs to defend our country and our interests around the world. But there will be no part of the budget that will escape scrutiny if I get in there as president. And so each one of those 903 outposts that you just talked about will be reviewed by me to make sure that I believe

they're absolutely necessary to meet America's vital national security interests. Is there anything in the budget that's a sacred cow that you would not review? No. Okay. Well, that includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Look, I think all of those need to be strengthened. You know, we're 11 years away from an automatic 25% reduction in Social Security benefits, because in 11 years, it will go broke. And the law says that if that happens, there has to be an automatic 25% cut in benefits. We are nine years away from that happening with Medicare.

And so I'm the only one in this race, Judge, who has been saying we need to address this. One of the most disgusting parts of Joe Biden's State of the Union address was when he said, let's all agree we're not going to touch Social Security in any way. And both parties got up and cheered. That was cowardice of the first order yes let them explain to the american people who are on social security right now or about to go on it um how they're going to solve for that 25 cut i have said we need to look at raising the retirement age not for people in their 50s and 60s judge they won't have enough time to plan for it appropriately and to be able to have the right retirement. But for people in their 30s and 40s,

they've got enough time to make an appropriate plan for that. And we should be looking at that. We should be looking at means testing. Those are all things that should be examined in the context of an overall fix to the system. Ronald Reagan did these things in the early 1980s, and he made Social Security solvent for another 50 years. My goal as president was to make Social Security and Medicare solvent for the next 50 years without bankrupting the American people at the same time. You and I are both in New Jersey as we're taping this.

It's 95 degrees out right now, and it's scheduled to be that way with about 90% humidity for the next three or four days. Is this the fault of human beings? Is climate control real? And is the need for climate control real? And if it is, is it a federal problem or is it a local and state problem?

Well, first off, I've always said that I think that climate change is real, is happening, and that human conduct contributes to it. Now, the problem here, Judge, is I want to answer your question a little bit differently. I don't think it's certainly a local and state problem. And I think it's bigger than a national problem. It's an international problem. And my example is that in the last 10 years, the United States has lowered our carbon output by a billion tons a year. At the same time, China has increased their carbon output by 5 billion tons a year. this problem of climate is not going to be solved by the United States acting unilaterally or any other country in the world acting unilaterally. It needs to be a part of an international negotiation. And right now, the only people unwilling to contribute anything

to this fight are the Chinese. And so it would be one of my priorities with the Chinese, we have a lot of them, is for them to stop with this nonsense that they're still going through an industrial revolution. They're the number two economy in the world already. Start to contribute to making the planet a better and safer place again, in this instance, for our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. Governor, one of the punches that you've landed solidly on former President Trump is that in his first two years in office, when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, he failed to undo Obamacare. Would you undo Obamacare? Would you move the country more toward a free market-based or free market option for health care rather than one micromanaged by the government? If I have a Republican House and Senate like Donald Trump did, you can bet we're going to

move more towards a free market approach to health care because I want to finally keep the promise that Barack Obama made back in 2009 and 10, which is if you like your doctor, you can keep it. And if you like your health plan, you can keep it. Well, we both know that those promises were garbage. Total garbage. And that's what the American people wanted, and that's what they were willing to support putting more people under health insurance if they could keep the health plan they like and continue to see the doctor they like. And that is the big lie from the Obama administration. Everyone on the Democratic Party side, you know, likes to talk about the big lie about the election stolen by Donald Trump.

But the starting of the big lie was by Barack Obama. The Obamacare was the big lie. So we've got to do that. And Donald Trump, and you and I both know this, the reason he didn't get it done was because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He had to abuse John McCain at every turn. And I got to know John McCain very well during my career. And I consider him a patriot and a war hero and a great public servant. But he also, as you know, Judge, had quite the temper and quite the long memory. And I had no doubt in my mind when it was coming down to John McCain's vote, even though John McCain had campaigned against Obamacare in 2008 against Barack Obama,

that he was not going to give Donald Trump the winning vote for that. And that's where as an executive, you got to remember, you've got to have the members of Congress on your side as much as you can. I have to tell the people watching us now that nobody did this better with a legislature of the opposite party than you. You didn't insult people that you disagreed with. You worked with them. And you're exactly right on John McCain and on Donald Trump. I, too, became a good friend of his, even though we agreed on almost nothing. And he had aspects of greatness to him. And if Trump had kept his mouth shut, McCain's vote would have gone the other way. Let me move to a couple of other topics. But I really appreciate

that touching answer, Governor. Immigration policy, how would you fix that? Well, a few aspects to it, right, Judge? First thing, and to me, the most important thing we have to do, and I would do this with an executive order my first day as president, I would send National Guard to the southern border with the specific task of interdicting fentanyl as they try to bring it over the border. Last year, we had 110,000 Americans die of drug overdoses in this country. It is now the leading killer among men 18 to 34. And this is, the Mexican drug cartels are being permitted to do this by the Mexican government, and the Chinese are sending the precursor chemicals

to those cartels so they can make the fentanyl. This is an act of war by the Chinese, Your Honor. They are sending those things intentionally. Those cartels bring them and move them over. What other immigration reforms might you implement, Governor? I think we need to work together with 8 million open jobs in this country. We need to fix the immigration system. There are 8 million jobs in this country right now that Americans are either not qualified to do or don't want to do. If we want to grow our economy, we got to get those jobs filled and get them creating more jobs. So what I would do, Judge, is bring both sides together

and spend whatever political capital I had to spend to change this immigration system. And again, it's got to include all these elements. It's got to be a fair way for folks to get into this country. There's got to be an ability to stop folks from coming into the country illegally. We have to look at what is going on in terms of the farm labor and less skilled labor and get those folks into the country as well in a way that's

fair. And the Democrats are going to want us to do something with DREAMers as well, Judge. And this is going to be a compromise. Otherwise, we're going to continue to have an immigration system that is broken and doesn't work for our country and allow us not to have a border. And if we don't have a border, we don't have a country. So, you know, Ronald Reagan did this as well, as you know. Right. And this is why I think we're ready to be president. reminds me of the late 1970s, energy crisis, hostages in Iran, Olympic boycotts, Soviets in Afghanistan, and a president who appeared incapable of inspiring the American people or getting the

job done. Let me remind you of a phrase you might want to use, and you'll remember this from Ronald Reagan, the misery index. Remember that? I do. I do. That was a canard that the Democrats created to try to whack Gerald Ford. And Jimmy Carter wound up having to eat it four years later. And look, the country turned to a conservative Republican governor from a blue state who, in governing that blue state, learned how to forge compromise on difficult issues and get things done. Sounds familiar. On Social Security. He did it on immigration. I intend to do the very same thing when I'm president.

A couple of few short questions. I know you have to go. Would a Christie Department of Justice continue to prosecute Julian Assange? You know, I would want my attorney general to make that judgment, Judge, and this is why I say that. I think there's been too much White House involvement over the last three administrations in the Department of Justice on criminal matters. Civil matters, perfectly appropriate for the White House to help the Department of Justice set policy. But let me tell you the kind of attorney general I'm going to have. I'm going to have an attorney general, since I had done this, as you noted earlier,

for seven years as part of the Justice Department. I want an attorney general who will know that it is his or her decision alone about what gets prosecuted and what does not, and that there will never be any interference from the White House when I'm president. And I will tell you, if you go back to any of my attorneys general when I was governor, despite my experience as a prosecutor, and believe me, I had opinions on the stuff they were doing in the criminal realm as I watched it, I kept my mouth shut, both publicly and privately, because I believe we're going to have confidence in our justice system. It has to be the attorney

general of the United States who makes that judgment, who will be above politics when it regards that, and will bring cases without fear, favor, or partisanship. We now have in New Jersey the worst governor in the modern era who succeeded you, and he has caused the school teachers to tell seven-year-olds how they can change their gender. The woke atmosphere and dialogue and culture is out of control. What would a Governor Christie do about setting the tone to dial back this woke nonsense, which is destroying our culture. Turn it back to parents, Judge. This does not belong in the purview of school teachers or

principals in a school. This belongs in the purview of a home with a mother and father who can talk to their children in a way that's consistent with their values. The government should not be involved in this in any way. And a government that restricts the freedom of parents to choose how to educate their children is as close to tyranny as we're going to find. And I see what Phil Murphy's doing. And not only is he doing what you're saying in our state, but also school districts who want to inform parents that their children have come to the school and said that they're having confusion about their gender. They say that the school can't tell parents. My wife and I have had to sign forms over the years so that our daughters could get an Advil at school. Yet, if they say they're confused about their gender, we have no right to know that.

This is insanity. Let's turn it back to parents to make these decisions. Yesterday, Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House, who may very well be the speaker of the House when and if you're in the White House, said he's in favor of moving forward on an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden. Do you agree with that? I would hope we'd be very, very cautious and careful about that, Judge. I think there's been a cheapening of the impeachment process that has gone on by both parties over a period of years. And I want to be careful about it. I also, we haven't spoken yet about the Hunter Biden situation, but what I would say to you is, I think that the Justice Department has to appoint a special counsel after the incompetent,

incompetent handling, if not corrupt handling of the Hunter Biden case by David Weiss in the District of Delaware. We need a special counsel, and if one is appointed, then I think Congress should take a step back to let that special counsel do his or her work. If it's not, then I think Congress has to do its oversight duties and look at all the evidence that's being presented. When the documents were revealed, secret Pentagon documents, allegedly by a young National Guardsman from Massachusetts up on Cape Cod, and the government has never challenged the authenticity or accuracy of these documents, they revealed, among many other things, the Pentagon's view that Ukraine will lose the war to the Russians. Should we continue to pile 60, 70, 80 billion into that war with our senior military leadership

believing it's going to be lost? You know, Your Honor, this is one where you and I, I think, disagree when I've heard you speak about it before. I think this is a proxy war by China. I think the stakes are much bigger than Ukraine. The Chinese are funding this war by Russia. They are coordinating with the Iranians to supply Russia with the most sophisticated weapons. And I think it is a pay me now or pay me later situation for the United States. If we're not willing to show the Chinese and the Russians for that matter, but more particularly the Chinese, that we are willing to stand up when someone like President Xi goes to Russia before the war and says there are no limits to Chinese support of Russia. Well, I think we have a bigger fight to wage here, Judge. And I'm concerned about what the Pentagon has had to say,

but I am more concerned with what President Xi has had to say. And I think we need to fight that fight. Would President Christie put troops on the ground, American troops on the ground in Ukraine? Absolutely not. Why not? Because I do not believe that that is a situation that merits American troops. And the reason is, first and foremost, the Ukrainians don't want them. Secondly,

we have to be very, very careful about how we choose where to put American lives at risk. And I would not do that in Ukraine at this time. Supplying them with the hardware they need to fight their fight themselves and to make it a fair fight against the Russians, I'm fine with. But putting American men and women on the ground there, I'm not. Last question before we go, and I'm deeply grateful for your time. You have a huge, basically libertarian audience watching us now. These folks believe in limited government and a federal government chained down by the Constitution and maximum individual liberty in the free market and in peace. What do you offer them? What I offer them is a governor who you know, when I was in New Jersey, was the

first governor to actually make the government smaller. We had 10,000 fewer employees in the New Jersey state government when I left office than we had when I got there. We had a budget that only went up 2% a year over eight years. We have 17 percent increase in our budget over eight years. And 95 percent of the money that was spent was on pensions, health care, and debt service of that increase. We limited government in every way that we could from a spending perspective. And we empowered parents in the educational realm by opening more charter schools than any administration in history, establishing Renaissance schools as another option for parents. And we were empowering poor parents in our urban areas to have hope that their children

could have a better life than them through a great education. I'll do the same thing as president and open educational freedom accounts and get the teachers union out of running our educational system and get parents back in charge of it. And lastly, I believe in our constitution. And that's why I'm someone who believes that Roe versus Wade should have been overturned. The Dobbs was written brilliantly by another New Jerseyan, Justice Alito, and that returning this question to the states, not to the federal government, but to the states is what we should do on the issue of abortion. Each state should make their own judgment, Your Honor, and the reason for that is that's what the Constitution calls for. And if we're not going, if when you stand up on the West Front of the Capitol, as I hope to do on January 20th of 2025,

and say you're going to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, that means the liberties that they gave us need to be the most precious gifts we protect. I have to ask you one last question, and you just made me think of it. The Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. Do you agree with the Bruin decision, Justice Thomas, of a year ago, 6-3, saying the right to keep arms is a personal right, and the right to bear arms is consistent with how that has been addressed throughout history, which means rational, law-abiding people ought to be able to bear arms. I absolutely do, and I fought this fight in New Jersey, unfortunately, unsuccessfully, because that Democratic legislature, that was one of them that I

couldn't get them to move on. But the fact is that the Second Amendment is not an inferior amendment, Your Honor. I don't look at any of them as inferior amendments. They are all equally important given how careful the founders were to write them and how vigorous the debate was to approve them. And so I am absolutely a supporter of the Second Amendment. I am a supporter of the Bruin decision that Justice Thomas wrote. And I will tell you, I think it was the single most important decision that Justice Thomas has authored in his time on the court. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican candidate for president. It's a pleasure to be with you. I hope you'll come back. We'll be watching you on the debate stage in New Hampshire. All the best. I'll come back after the debate, Judge, so you can give me a grade. You got it.

Thank you. Thank you.