The Dispatch Podcast - Fake Town Halls (w/ Chris Christie)

Episode Date: May 7, 2023

Will he or won't he? Chris Christie joins David M. Drucker to talk about Bridgegate, his changing relationship with Trump, and what's next for the former governor. Show Notes: -Watch: David M. Drucker interviews Chris Christie -Subscribe to The Dispatch and watch an exclusive live Remnant with Jonah, Steve Hayes, and Chris Stirewalt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, lease a 2026 XC90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com.

Welcome to Washington. I'm David Drucker, a senior writer with The Dispatch, and thanks for joining us for another edition of The Dispatch Podcast. On this episode, former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie. Governor Christie is on the cusp of deciding whether to enter the 2024 race for the Republican presidential nomination in what would be his second White House campaign. And so we decided to check in with him to see where he is in the process, what his campaign would look like, and his strategy for defeating the frontrunner, former president, Donald Trump. Governor Chris Christie, thanks so much for joining us on the Dispatch podcast. David, thanks for having me. Let me jump right in with the easy stuff. We'll get to the argumentative questions later, where I try to make it a little bit interesting and newsworthy. the easy stuff first

are you running for president haven't decided yet but I expect I'll decide in the next 10 days or so okay look you and I have discussed over the past six months or so a couple of times this topic

and you know you would explain to me there are things you needed to figure out could you raise the resources do you think you can win and I think I'm stealing this line from you but it's not all that glamorous to run for president and you know when it's 10 degrees in Iowa and you've spent your fourth night in a row at some holiday and express. It's not

like the commercial. You don't actually feel good in the morning. So you want to know you can win if you're going to put forth the effort. Is your family on board? Maybe I'm leaving something out. How many of these questions have you answered? And can you tell me how you've answered the ones you have answered? I've answered two of them. The first one is my family on board. The answer is yes. Much different situation for my family now, even though it was eight years ago. My wife and I are empty nesters now. All of our children are out of the house. And so a lot less complicated life than you have when you had, back then, we had a middle school age child at a high school age child at home and one in college. So it was a much

different time then. Secondly, the question of, can I, do I think I can win? Yeah, I do. I do think that there is a, there was a real opportunity. The American people, I think, want someone who knows how to do this job and to whom the truth matters. And so I think there is an opportunity to win. And the last piece of it is, you know, making sure that you have the resources necessary to be able to communicate. And we're still exploring those issues. And we'll come to a conclusion pretty quickly.

Have you given yourself a date by which you have to become a candidate just so you can get where you need to be by the time of the first debate? which is going to be sometime in August. This is the Republican televised debates for the primary, given that there are going to be certain metrics that candidates have to meet. I think it's relatively soon, David. I've been giving myself a drop-dead date, so to speak. But what I have done is to act with a sense of urgency on the questions that we've talked about.

And so I would say we'd be able to come to conclusion pretty soon. And I think, you know, it makes sense to come to a conclusion pretty soon. for some of the reasons you talked about and a whole bunch of others. Okay. You've been spending some time in New Hampshire lately. I haven't had a chance to get up there yet because I still have school-age kids and I still have to negotiate with my wife. Who's picking this one up from school and who's taking this one to baseball practice?

So I totally feel you on that either way. I don't know how you guys do this or how you did do it. But you've been spending some time conducting town hall meetings in New Hampshire. And look, for the uninitiated, there's nothing like a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. They may not even intend to vote for you, but they love the opportunity to pretend to be somebody like me and ask you the most annoying, difficult questions they can come up with. What's that been like and what have you learned? Well, first of all, it's been great in the respect that I haven't done this for a number of years. I'm in a town hall type setting.

Something I did over 100 of them when I ran last time in New Hampshire. Did nearly 200 of them when I was governor of New Jersey. So it's a format that I really like and I'm comfortable with. But if you're not having done it for a few years, you don't quite know whether you'll still like it and still be good at it. But I felt good about the way they went. And it's the same thing about the New Hampshire voter. They're incredibly engaged. They're engaged on the issues.

They're engaged on the politics. And they generally ask, you know, good questions. And they demand answers back. And if you don't answer, they're going to, you know, interrupt you back. And they're going to get into it back and forth with you. And so I enjoy that being from New Jersey. That's the way we conduct everyday business. So I'm used to it and I, and I've enjoyed the time up there in New Hampshire, especially the town hall.

And he's also done some house parties and the things that you do up there to kind of get a feel for what people are thinking. All right. So you haven't lost your taste for campaigning necessarily is what you're telling us. Yes. Okay. Is there anything, though, that you've picked up from talking to voters like, oh, I didn't realize that issue was such an animating issue or the way they maybe, you know, asked you about other people in the field. It really seems like this person, you know, whether they're running or not, has made a dent. I mean, is there any real takeaway other than how you felt about it that gave you some insight as to where the voters are?

Well, again, we're talking to almost exclusively Republican primary voters. And there are two things that came out the most frequently. One is their complete discontent and dismissal of Joe Biden. I mean, they really believe. And I think some of these people actually voted for Joe Biden in 2020, according to what they told me. And, and they're just completely disillusioned and dismissive of him. They feel like he first and foremost is not up to the job. That came across very clear. Secondly, they think he didn't tell him the truth in 2020. But he said he was going to try to bring the country together, be a

moderating force on our politics. And they feel like he's run far to the left and brought them policies that they just didn't want him to do with. So I'm not discontent on Biden. The other thing I picked up on is Republican voters are looking for an alternative to Trump. There are many voters who showed up at our town halls who said, look, we just don't think he can win in 2024. We don't think there's a Democrat he can beat. We think because of some of his failed policies as president, but more importantly, some of his failed personal conduct that he just can't win. And so they're looking for somebody who can take Trump on and could be an ultimate Trump alternative. They're open to it.

And that's a really interesting thing to have drawn from these voters. And I can tell both by the way they're asking their questions. And some asked me, you know, just said it to me directly. Interesting. And I want to get into that in a minute. Just as a side note, though, obviously New Hampshire is easy to get to. And the interaction with voters is pretty unique. But why no test run in Iowa or South Carolina, which is if you're going to run and you're going to be successful, maybe you skip one, but you don't usually skip both.

Well, look, I'm not a candidate as of yet. And if I am a candidate, you know, we'll be looking to look at all four of those first states. Now, remember, South Carolina is a bit of a different animal this time, David, because you have the incumbent United States senator getting ready to answer the race. and you have their most recent former governor in the race. So I think South Carolina is a bit of a different animal on the Republican side than it usually is. Usually it's very much one of the early bellwethers of how you're going to do in a southern state that also has an urban feel to it in places like Charleston and others where a lot of northeasterners have moved over time. But I think this time when you have the incumbent United States Senator and the former two-term governor in the race, I think South Carolina is a bit of a different animal

and that there may be more of a focus on Nevada this time than there would be on South Carolina. Okay. Let's talk a little polling. Donald Trump's lead in the real clear politics average as we are having this conversation puts him about 30 points better than the guy in second place and that's Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And I just wanted to ask you,

Do you believe that Republican voters, broadly speaking, love Trump that much? Or do you think DeSantis and the rest of the field as it exists is just doing that bad of a job of making the case? Well, look, I don't think the campaigns haven't even really started yet in earnest, right? So the field is still somewhat ill-defined. And I don't think people really engage. I don't think the campaign really starts, David, until the first debate in August in Milwaukee. And I think that's when the campaign really starts. And so I don't think we'll know anything until then.

I would remind people of two examples. More recently, eight years ago, at this time in the early May of 2015, the leading candidates for president on the Republican side by a good margin were Jet Bush and Scott Walker. But go back to 2007, in May of 2007, Barack Obama was 40. behind Hillary Clinton in May of 2007. So it just tells you that this early polling isn't worthless, but it is hardly determinative of what ultimately is going to happen. All right. Fair enough.

I'll push back a little just by saying that Donald Trump is a particularly well-known person at this juncture. I mean, forget all the TV stuff. That's old news. He was president of the United States for four years. He's been, I mean, I might see him more than I see my wife every single day, just given the job that I do, in terms of how much he consumes media attention and makes himself the center of attention. But I wanted to tie that little editorializing to what you've been learning from voters, at least in New Hampshire. I understand that there are some voters on the Republican side, and I've talked to these voters that are either fed up, don't think he can win, or just want.

a fresh face, especially when you think of a Biden-Trump matchup, a rematch, if you will. But, you know, something I think is curious to a lot of Republicans who are looking for a Trump alternative is that it's still, I think, hard for them to understand how Trump can jump out to such an early lead. And we're going to tie this back to how your campaign would look if you launch one, but how he can jump out to such an early lead, given everything, given that he loses in 2020, given three straight disappointing elections for Republicans, given his denial of his loss, his attempt to overturn his loss, January 6th, and I know that the New York indictment was flimsy, but the legal trouble and legal jeopardy that is, you know,

that is sort of hanging over him. And yet he can still be such a front runner. I mean, does that tell you something about where your party is at this present time? No, I think it kind of back to the, as you called it, a little bit of editorializing you were doing before the question. You know, he's by far and away the best known person in that field. By far and away, because he was president of the United States. And so when no campaign has begun, when no one's really engaging with him directly or with the electorate all that much, of course, it's going to be the person who's best known. And by the way, you know, to respond your editorializing. And not like Hillary Clinton was a wallflower and unknown. I mean,

she was the two-term first lady in the United States, United States Senator from New York when she ran in 2008. So, and by far in a way, at that time, the co-most famous name in American politics with the Bush name. Oh, by the way, that was the name of the guy who also was leading in 2015. May not have been George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush. But it was Jedbush, and I think people were fairly familiar with him, too. So I don't think those people should be underestimated in terms of the challenge they presented and the notoriety they had as compared to Donald Trump. It's less, but it's not significantly less.

And these campaigns are human dynamics or the interaction and how people perform in the campaign have a lot to do with the result. And if you don't believe me, look at what Donald Trump did in 2015 and 2016. when he came down that escalator in 2015, I watched out of the coverage because I was getting ready to get in the race too. And I didn't remember anybody saying to me, maybe with the exception of Ann Coulter,

saying that Donald Trump was going to be the winner. Fascinating. On a related matter, the debates, I would imagine, should be a pretty significant event in the upcoming primary. And Trump has indicated, you know, just about every Republican I have been covering whether they're in the race or not that includes you uh they talk about the debates

the debates with with a lot of sort of hopeful optimistic anticipation right it gives you a chance to showcase yourself differentiate yourself either solidify a lead or capture a lead uh trump's obviously looking at this differently but i'm i'm wondering his desire not to debate maybe it's sensible i mean when you look at how he debated in 2020 at least that first debate with joe biden and you look at the lead, at least he begins with. Maybe it makes sense, or do you think he's making a mistake? Well, how about we, I don't address either one of those questions in saying, saying this, he owes it to the American people to debate if he wants to be president of the United States again.

What are we supposed to do? Give him a participation trophy for the last time. I mean, if you're not afraid to get on the stage, why would you not get on the stage? If he is as great as he says he is, I mean, I've heard him say he's the second best president after Abraham Lincoln, as ridiculous as that is given his record. But, you know, this is a guy, Abraham Lincoln debated for hours with Stephen Douglas all over the country in 1860. Donald Trump is afraid because he can't defend his record.

He can't defend his conduct. And he's afraid to get on stage with anybody who'll call him the task on it. And I have to say the truth, David, it's interesting because when you see how he failed as a negotiator or President G of China. how he failed as a negotiator with President Putin of Russia, those confrontations he failed on both of them. He failed with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. In some ways, we shouldn't be surprised

that Donald Trump is afraid to stand up against strong people. He never has, except through his Twitter account, or when he's in front of 20,000 people at an arena when he can be, you know, a TV tough guy. But when it comes to actually staring somebody in the eye and having a debate, he owes it to the American people to get on that stage

and articulate what his vision is if he has one for 2024. And it is awfully, awfully telling that he is already saying he may not do it. I tell you, the streak of yellow down his back is visible from where I'm sitting. Has something changed with him in that regard?

Because you helped him prep for those 2020 debates. In 2016, in 2016, look, I remember you being very eager to debate. I remember other candidates being eager to debate. And I don't recall him, although I recall him skipping a debate, he didn't always seem to be working so hard to get out of them. Has something changed, as you game him out as a possible opponent and look for weak spots, has something changed in his medal that he'd like to avoid these sort of confrontations at all costs?

Yeah, he's got he's got a bunch of failures as president that he now is to defend. And that's why he was so on edge in 2020 and not nearly as effective debater as he was in 2016. And you look at it, you know, in 2016, he promised to build a wall. He didn't do it. In 2016, he said not only will he build the wall, but the Mexicans would pay for it. We're still waiting for our first peso from Mexico on that one, right? He said he was going to balance the budget. in five years. We had the worst budget deficits when he left office of any president in history.

He said he was going to retire the national debt in eight years. We're at $31 trillion in national debt, most of a good part of which he contributed to through his policies. You know, if you've, he said he was going to repeal and replace Obamacare. And he had a Republican Congress and he couldn't get it done because his failure of leadership. I don't think he wants to get on the stage and talk about those things because they are indefensible because most of them happened. with a Republican Congress in place. It sounds like if you were going to be hosting that CNN town hall that he's agreed to do, you'd have a few questions for him in that regard.

Just a couple. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain, on top of everything else,

is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your

site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right, let me talk about something that you, I, I swear I'm stealing this from you, but if I'm not, you should take credit for it anyway. But I think you recently said that one of the things, whether you learned it because you ran in 2016 or you knew it instinctively, but one of the things that you've learned is that when you look at these presidential primary campaigns and think about what lane do I occupy and how strategically should I grab this pool of voters and not offend that pool of voters, that lanes are essentially. for losers. That if you're going to run, you run to win, you go straight at the front runner, and that's the way you get this thing done. If you were to launch a campaign, what is it going

to look like strategically, stylistically? I mean, we know who you are, but where are we going to see you? And what is your message going to be? Well, look, I like to pry myself from being a pretty logical guy and a good listener, right? So let's just take what you and I have been talking about since we got on to this podcast. And it's Donald Trump. And so I'm not dumb.

The way to win is to beat the guy who's ahead. And so what would a campaign look like? A campaign would look like a direct frontal challenge to Donald Trump trying to return to the presidency. And I think any other campaign that does anything different than that, and I do that not only on a personal basis, but on a policy basis, and laying out how your vision is different than Donald Trump's for the 2024 and beyond the United States. But it will be a direct frontal challenge to the frontrunner because the only way to become the winner is to beat the guy who's leading. I was talking to a Republican operative recently who was supporting a different candidate, not Trump, one of the other contenders, who agrees with your approach strategically, but was still trying to figure out for himself, what's the message that beats the guy? And I think it gets back to this, you know, whether it was January 6th and there was losing and there was all of that.

And still he jumps out to a big lead. with that frontal assault, do you have confidence in a particular message that obviously is something you're going to believe, presumably, that this is what I need to say to beat him. Or if anything's going to beat him, it's not just going after him, but this is what it has to be.

That his presidency failed us. We gave him everything the Republicans had been dreaming of. A nice Republican majority in the House, House, a Republican majority in the Senate, and a 306 vote electoral vote victory. There were no excuses for him not to accomplish everything that he promised, but most particularly the stuff that he made the centerpiece of his campaign, which was repeal and replace Obamacare, build the wall in Mexico, and get us, get our country under some fiscal control. And he failed in all three. Now look, you know, you have to live with the record you've

created. And I think that's the way to talk about it. The American people want a president and get something done. He has proven that outside of his tax cuts and the work that he did on regulation, the rest of his presidency was a mishmash, which led to us losing the House in 2018, losing the Senate in 2020, and losing the White House in 2020. It wasn't just because they didn't like Donald Trump. It was because he didn't deliver what he promised. No law on the southern border. And so now we have a Democratic president, illegal immigrants are streaming over the southern border and many of them bring fentanyl with them. He didn't repeal and replace Obamacare. So we're stuck with the same health care system we've had before. And we've got the

worst national debt we've ever had in the nation's history. So that doesn't sound to me like a resume for, you know, re-uping somebody on the job. And I think, you know, talk about that first and foremost, because those are the things that affect the American people's lives much more than some of the other stuff you mentioned. All right. Let's talk about something that doesn't concern the American people at all, but totally concerns me and the few, you know, elitists that will also pay attention to me when I write about campaigns, even though it's really about the voters. But that's about your campaign infrastructure. If you decide to go ahead with this in the next few weeks, do you have key advisors in place?

Do you have, you know, a campaign manager in mind and all of the key elements to at least getting something off the ground and making sure it operates as it should? I'm really fortunate, David, and I think this also tells you something about me as a manager and a leader. I have the very same team, in essence, that I had when I ran against John Corzine in 2000. And these people have stayed with me over the last nearly 14 years now. They become personal friends, but also are some of the best people in the business. And unlike Donald Trump's White House, where he humiliated and insulted one person after

another after telling us that he was going to hire only the best and brightest. And then why they're firing most of them. And now calling somebody like Mick Mulvaney stupid afterwards, you know, My team has stayed predominantly intact with very few exceptions since 2009. And so if I run for president, I think you will see predominantly a couple of new additions here and there. But core team is the same team that beat John Corzine in 2009 and led me to a 61% re-election in a blue state with 51% of the Hispanic vote in 2013.

It's going to be the same group. Interesting. This I'm just curious about because I just, you know, if you cover a presidential race and, you know, nobody's going to feel bad for you because nobody makes you do it. But it's probably mentally and physically one of the most grueling things you can do in terms of what we do for a living. If you're in political office, if you work in the media and follow guys like you around, what did you learn about yourself in 2016? in that contest that was sort of unique and different that that would inform you if you go ahead with a second run well i think i learned two things one that i kind of suspected but now it was proven out and another one which i was really happy to discover the first one is that i'm resilient

um there were all kinds of hits taken at me in the lead up to the 2016 campaign both inside and outside of New Jersey and then hits during the campaign. And I just was able to get up every morning off the mat and keep fighting. And I think you always hope that of yourself, but that actually got proven to me. I suspected it would be the truth, but it got proven to me in 2016. The other thing that I happily discovered was, like, I really enjoy campaigning. I really enjoy interacting with people. I really enjoy the back and forth of debating with people and discussing these issues with people

and arguing and disagreeing with the people who disagree with me. And I didn't see it as some arduous labor. I really enjoyed it. And I learned that in 2016. And I think, you know, not having some of the same expectations I had on me when I ran for governor kind of helped to free me up a little bit to that. And I felt very relaxed and very, um, gratified. by the fact that I really was enjoying interacting with the people of New Hampshire and the people of Iowa in 2016, and I only wish it would have lasted longer. All right, we're getting a little bit toward the end here of the dispatch podcast, but before I let you go and get on to more productive endeavors, we're going to pretend that we're at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire or Iowa or somewhere, only it's just a town hall just for me.

And I'm going to pretend to ask you some of the questions I imagine you'll get, especially by plants, you know, and trackers, people designed to just create something viral. First thing I imagine could happen is somebody is going to say, look, Governor, I understand what you're saying about Donald Trump, but you were one of his most, you know, ardent backers in 2016. not only that, your endorsement when it came in that campaign came at a critical time. Maybe he was on the ropes because he had had a bad debate with Marco Rubio, which obviously came after the bad debate Marco Rubio had with you. But he was one of the few candidates standing in the way of Donald Trump. And here you go giving him the imprimatur of the Republican establishment, which mattered for him at that time.

And now you're just telling me you've had a change of heart. So, you know, how do you explain helping this danger to the Republic or whatever you're calling him now then, but I'm supposed to believe you now? Well, two things. One, in 2016, I was convinced after South Carolina that he was going to be the nominee, no matter what anybody else said. He had won New Hampshire two to one. He had won South Carolina by double digits and had barely lost Iowa. He looked to me like the nominee. So I wanted to try to make him the best candidate to be because I didn't want Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States.

And I will tell you that I don't regret a minute of that, David. I didn't want Hillary Clinton to be president. I don't want ever want Hillary to be president. And so that's why I worked for Donald Trump. He was not my first choice in 2016. David, I was. But it didn't work out. And so I helped the guy who I thought could be Hillary Clinton.

And in fact, he did. And in 2020, I supported him and helped him. Because I thought he was better than Joe Biden. Even though a flawed choice, he was better than Joe Biden. But on the evening of the election, that's when, my break came from Donald Trump because he came out there at 2.30 in the morning behind the seal of the president in the eastern of the White House and told the American people the election had been stolen when he had no evidence to prove that it had. To me, that's beneath the office the American

people had privileged him with, and that is beneath what an American leader should be doing. He should have conceded the election because there was no theft of the election. He should have congratulated Joe Biden, got to his inaugural like a man, and then got back tomorrow. and if he wanted to resume his political career, that was his option. But when he did what he did that night, well before January 6th, when he did what he did that night, I broke with him on ABC, on the air at 2.30 in the morning, and we have not been alive since. I didn't leave him, David.

He acted in the way that is beneath the office that he held. Gotcha. I imagine if you have some traction in the race, if you enter the race and you start climbing in the polls and you're a threat to him, And there'll be lots of stories about your tenure as governor, how you won an unlikely race in 2009 in a blue state when a massive reelection. And of course, eventually people will get around to that issue with the closure on the George Washington Bridge. It was known as Bridgegate. And if not somebody like me, a plant would definitely ask you, all right, so you're supposed to be an executive.

We can trust to get things done. But you didn't even know what was going on in your administration. And your answer would be. my answer would be that when those people were surfaced for what they did they were fired immediately by me and that's what the responsible executive does i had 60,000 people working for me and i never claimed that i would know what all 60,000 were doing every minute of the day but secondly it was also an abused by the obama justice department the entire investigation and if you want proof of that when their case ultimately went to the united states supreme court they dismissed it 9-0

The Obama Justice Department did something that no one else could ever do. They brought Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg together. They both voted the same way. So it's really a non-issue. I did what I needed to do as an executive. And the rest of it was created by the Obama Justice Department going out and targeting somebody they thought was a threat to become President of the United States. And the 9-0 Supreme Court ruling proves that. I also think that somebody will jump on you, speaking of the Obama administration, for that.

post-Hurricane Sandy Hug, which many Republicans felt, okay, he's the president, a natural disaster hits your state. You have to meet him at the airport. We get that. You have to tour with him, the damage. We get that. Your first responsibility is to your constituents and to your state. But did you really have to make them look like such a bipartisan, you know, did you have to make them look that good when Mitt Romney is fighting to take back the White House for your party. David, I have absolutely no regrets about putting my job first. And my job was to make sure that with $30 billion in damage to my state, with two-thirds of the state without power, with not one operational water treatment or wastewater treatment plan, and every school in the

state closed, that my first job was to make sure that my state rebuilt and recovered from the worst natural disaster it ever sustained and the second worst in American history. So I told the truth about what the president was doing. The president was helpful to us. Every time I picked up the phone and called and asked him for something, he gave it to New Jersey when we needed it. And so when someone asked me, is he doing a good job on the storm? I'm not going to lie and say no because it's seven days before the election. And I invited Mitt Romney to come two days later to tour and he didn't come. So, you know, there's only certain decisions you can make as governor. But my decision was I took an oath of office to protect, defend, and advocate for

the people of New Jersey. And that's exactly what I did. And because of it, today now, 10 years later, after Sandy, the state is completely rebuilt, recovered, and better than it was 10 years ago. Okay. And listen, because I don't want to ruin your love of the town hall meeting and, you know, give you unnecessary second thoughts about a second campaign. We'll end it this way.

I imagine that you might get something like this. Governor, I really like you. I'm considering voting for you. but I'm really concerned about Medicare and Social Security. I don't want anybody touching Medicare and Social Security. I'm sure I know we have a big debt and I know we're spending too much money, but I'm sure there's a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. President Trump is promising me, former President Trump,

that he's not going to touch entitlement programs. Even Joe Biden, and I don't like him, but even Joe Biden promises me. He's not touching my Medicare, Social Security. So can you promise me that if you're elected president, that reforming, overhauling, changing a period or a comma in the statute of Medicare and Social Security, that that is completely off the table and you're going to protect those programs. I'm going to protect those programs, but the way to protect them is to do something to fix them, because in seven years, Social Security will be belly up.

And if that happens, there's an automatic 24% cut in everybody's benefits. Do you want that? I don't. And so we need to get together, Republicans and Democrats, to work together to fix the program. And if we don't fix the program, believe me, I know Donald Trump won't because he did nothing to fix it in the four years he was there. And if he give him four more years, he won't do it. If you give Joe Biden four more years, he won't do it either. You know why?

Because all of them will be gone and out of office after four years. And the hammer comes down in seven years. So they'll try to be Mr. Happy handing out candy to everybody. But in the end, the truth matters, David. The truth is we got to do some things to fix Social Security and Medicare. And if anybody tells you they're going to do nothing, that means you're getting ready for a 24% cut in your benefits in seven years. Chris Christie is the former two-term governor of New Jersey, a possible 2024 presidential candidate. Governor Christie, thanks so much for joining us on the dispatch podcast.

David, thanks so much for having me. And I loved your version of the town hall. No problem at all. Thank you so much, sir. Appreciate your time. You got it. You know,