too many people, chris christy is known as governor, abc news analyst, national spokesperson and also "new york times"ha best-selling author. also a career that extends beyond as well as a number of

programsms across the state butn these parts friends, families, neighbors and coaches. we are pleased to have them in our communities. as sad as a matter of fact itrs was three years ago almost three years ago chris christy's first book came out, let me finish, that he was gracious. we held that at the high school and that was sold out. i'm pleased to say with the second book we've jumped for joy ands myself and my fellow board members said let's go for it and here we are again. three years ago and tonight you could say that the book signing is like hamilton on broadway. we will try to answer the

questions and then have some q-and-a. without further go do. [applause] i will make sure i don't have any feedback on this but this is great this is a nice cozy group and i just want to say thank you. the library has been an important part of our life and our families life for thema past 30 years which is amazing. we appreciate all that the library is doing.

i just paid a $40 fine to the library two weeks ago. i had to pick up a book and i guess i hadn't been in a couple years so i paid my $40 fine. [laughter] you don't even want to know. thank you to everybody for coming out it's been an interesting journey the last six or seven months. what i wanted to start out with and ask him to tell a look at of the process about writing it. >> thanks everybody for being here tonight it's great to be home. i've been on the road most of the last two and a half weeks around thanksgiving on a book tour where i've been in new york and chicago, los angeles and washington.

it's been a busy few weeks to have my last official book event at home so thank you for coming out tonight. i decided to write the book after the inaugural i did the commentary and then we decided to take a few days out in florida to relax after what had been a really much more grueling thanan usual tv schedule becauss the craziness and how long it took for the results to come. i was sitting at the pool and thinking to myself this is probablyor one of the worst two years the republican party had had in a long time. we lost the majority of the house of representatives and then the senate and the white house. it struck me it may have been

one of the worst times we ever had so i got on my laptop and looked it up and it's only happened twice since the founding in 1860. the last time after this one was 1930 and 1932 and herbert hoover was president of the unitedus states he lost the house and senate and what happened after that is the democrats had the white house for 28 of the next 36 years so it struck me that maybe somebody who had been a very big supporter needed to write a book about how we start to win again. as someone who had been opposed all the way through and a number of republicans were, i don't think there would have been credibility in writing this book.

people would have dismissed it but i had concerns about where the party was headed, the direction we were going into th aftermath and ideas about what we needed to do to get back on track so the process is new youpitch the book to the publiss and we had a couple who were interested but all of them said if you're going to write that kind of book the first part has to be about your interaction the last year and a half after let me finish the book ended through to his leaving office in january so when you get the chance to read the book if you haven't already, it is the first third of the book kind of a recounting of stories and incident that happened with me and the president and that is where i started.ll now i have a collaborator on the book who was my collaborator on the first book as well and we

have a process we use when writing the book. we get together and agree what topics we will discuss. he takes out a tape recorder and starts asking questions and i start talking. then there is a woman in kansas who has to transcribe all of that and send us the transcriptions back to me and then we craft chapters. then when we get done with that there is another one that has to do the research to make sure that everything that we say that we are completely sure of ism actually true. and i will give you one example from let me finish, where i would have absolutely sworn that this was a correct recollection i had a good friend of mine who was murdered and i was telling the story at that time and he

said when did this happen. i said to the day before school started my senior year in high school. so we write the book and write this chapter and he comes back and says are you sure it was the day before school started. i said absolutely sure i remember like it was yesterday. this woman found the front page of our local weekly paper and it was the day before the start of school my junior year. i guarantee if you put a gun to my head and said if you are wrong we are going to blow your brains out i would have said go ahead because i know i absolutely no. so, roberta plays an integral role in w the process by researching everything we talk about and make sure we have it right first and foremost for the integrity of the book and the second the lawyers at simon &

schuster want to make sure we t don't say something that is completely wrong and all of us get sued. so chapter by chapter comes in, we are working on it together with a lot of editing and changing. e we probably go back and forth on each chapter two to three times, he makes suggestions, i make suggestions and we follow back and forth by e-mail and then we get the manuscript done and send it to the editor at simon & schuster. she then will send it back to us with the things she wants us to explain more or add and in this instance we were on a tight deadline because to get to the start of the book when we started this in march to have it out by november is like speed record. i don't get that but i don't

want to argue with the publisher. we were working really quickly. she then decided she wanted an additional chapter and send this by e-mail. they called me and said did you read the latest e-mail and i said not yet. he said don't. i'm going to break it to you gently, she wants another chapter so we were on the phone with each other and i said on watch and it was a chapter on policies. we talk about covid a lot in the book on the first part of my experience and i'm sure we will get to that but this is on what should the policy be going forward and by the way i need it in two days.

so i said turn on your tape recorder we don't have time to get together. let's go and lease just started and we had the last chapter done. then the last thing you do is you write the dedication and acknowledgment. the front of the book is to our four children and acknowledgments are a whole lott of people who contributed to helping write the book or this part of my life and career so that's the way you write a book and believe me when you are finally done with the acknowledgments and hit send and they acknowledge they've they receivedit, you don't wantt again. you don't want to see the book until it looks like that and when it does all you do is look at the cover and the title page. i've not looked at the text since late august when i sent it

back out. >> you also did an audiobook so that was a painful 25 hour experience i believe and the other thing some of us read and edited i'mgh going to tell a little inside story the cover with an elephant with a life preserver originally had a red cross on it. the red cross opposed to that. >> it was holding a red cross flag but they wouldn't give us permission so we had to go through the preserver. >> which is great but on the final copy the little elephant outside still had the red flag and i flagged it. >> she said wait the elephant on the side has the flag. that will tell you how little i wanted to look at this anymore.. good catch because we probably would have gotten sued by red

cross. so that is the process of the way and pretty much the same process for let me finish as well. >> chris is a student of history, loves history and i am part of this book because there's a lot t of history. talk to the audience about the fact that we go over conspiracy theories and why it's so important to review history and in particular the society and i think they might find that interesting to hear that background. >> when i started to talk about the idea and make the argument for why engaging into spending any more time in these different conspiracy theories that have been out there, i thought i had a place in some historical context like this isn't the first time we've gone through this as a country or a party so

i write extensively a large chapter on the john birch society which in the late 50s and early 60s became a force inside the republican party very much one that had a an anti-somatic strength to it. it ran in through a number of conspiracy theories in that regard and became a force inside the republican party. william f buckley who is the founder of the national radio magazine was disturbed by the developments and seeing how prominent it was becoming in the partly politics so he approached barry goldwater knowing he was considering running for president in 64 he says we should do this together and

pushed back on these people. if we do so together i think we could have an impact on the party, so let's i will rate the first editorial and you write a letter to letter to the editor supporting the tutorial. goldwater agrees and buckley writes a 4,000 word editorial in the editorial about why the society is so bad for america and for the republican party, talks about the anti-semitism and why that's so bad. goldwater starts to get pressure back. he is worried he won't win the nomination and 64 and so he writes back a very short letter

to buckley which is nothing like what they agreed upon so he decides he's not going to publish itse at first and he gos to somebody else to see who has that ability in the movement to see if he will back him up on this. at that time he wasn't elected. he had given a speech and 64 on behalf of goldwater entitled rendezvous with destiny and reagan had to become a popular figure in the movement because of the speech. he would be elected two years later but reagan stood up and wrote a long letter as a former democrat as to why he thought they were not somebody we should be embracing and it did the

trick. goldwater ran and you may remember the speech at the convention one of the most famous lines was extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. that is directly. and he lost monumentally. in fact the little historical note, he was the last republican to lose for president until donald trump in 2020 from 64 to 2020 he voted for every republican presidential candidate. they rejected goldwater and trump in 2020 and i didn't put in the book because they wouldn't really care about that historical comparison but this audience will and i think it says something about the historical comparison that we

are making. it's an interesting chapter which is where you talk about birth tourism or the election that we are not in a unique time. i hate when i hear commentators say we are in the most dangerous time in the history of this country. we are more divided than we've ever been in our history. i had someone say that at abc. george came to me and i said i don't know. it seems to me the civil war is probably a time that we were more divided than we are now. so that was a random thought but maybe a little common sense and hyperbole and the reason is to tell you we've been here before and remember what happened after that. after that we won the presidency

between 1968 and 1992 so the republican party recovered and became once again international wforce at the presidential levl because we got back to basics and that is part of what the book is all about. >> along the same lines of history repeats itself you went in with reams of examples of articles from previous presidents, incumbent presidents. tell the audience what you told president trump. >> close your eyes and picture this for the moment i played hillary clinton. [laughter] i didn't do the first debate int

2016. prepping forer the first debateo the performance kind of reflected that and after the first debate he called me and said will you do the prep for the second debate and i said only if i am in charge of it and if i can decide who lives in the room because if we have every canary in the room i don't care to play and he said your choice. we watched the second one at home and seven or eight minutes after it's over my phone rang and it was donald trump and he said to me you are so great that was so easy.

compared to debating you it was great. you are a better hillary than she is so you're going to do debate three, right? so 2020 comes and his staff comes to me, his chief of staff at the time was mark meadows and his son-in-law and if you readam the book he's a dear friend of mine, came to meba and said we want you back in charge for the debate prep. this is in july. we want to start this weekend. i said he's not going to like this. it's too early. no, no, he needs a lot of work and i said ina know but he's not going to like this and they insisted that they had spoken to him and he was fine with it.

3:00 on saturday okay so the president of the united states will choose to come so i go. we are at the conference room at and in walks the president from his round of golf and he sits down and i'm sitting in the chair across from him. he looks at me and says what the hell are you doing here and i said debate prep. he says are you kidding me. in july for the end of september how stupid do you think i am. i'm looking now at jared and meadows and i knew this was a set up and t they hadn't spokeno him because they didn't have the guts and figured i would charm him so i prepared. i went back into since the and n

era presidential debate started between kennedy and nixon then there were no debates in 64, 68 or 72 then 76 gerald ford was way behind jimmy carter in the race coming out of the convention so he agreed to debate with corridors so that started. but i brought articles leg printed out from 76, from 80, 84, 92, 96, 2004 and 2012 when there was an incumbent president seeking reelection.

and in every one of them the incumbent president lost the first debate. i spoke to some of the folks that prepped those presidents for the debate and they told me thent same thing. they don't want to prep because they are presidents. they don't know the presidency, i know the presidency. they said we need to start now and he said what do i have to prepare for, i'm president. so i go in and take out the article and circled across the table to him and said the debate prep is over we are not doing

anything else today. all i want you to do is go back tonight and read those articles and then i will see you next time and i got up. they were like maybe we should talk in general. i said read the articles. what are they about. i said however he incumbent president lost because they were president. sound familiar. he said is that the true which s kalso another indication about the depth of historical knowledge of donald trump about politics. he just doesn't have any so this was all news to him and i gave it to him and i walked out and they followed me out. i looked at them and i go you are so full of crap you never talked to him and of course they

denied it into said they did but he was clearly surprised to see me there. so he read the article and ofea course he didn't follow any of the advice but he read it because he called me a couple of days later and here was the conclusion he drew from that. of those other guys are so bad. i can't believe how bad all of them were. i'm not going to be like that. nti'm going to be really good. okay, mr. president, you got it. >> he must not have been a boy scout. being prepared wasn't his forte. >> it was 16 was difficult because it was right at the end of the prep for the second debate access hollywood happened. so i am in the middle ofon prepping him on the friday afternoon before the sunday

debate and in came his press secretary with a transcript of the tape so that kind of derailed us for a little while but he was receptive to the preparation in 2015 and he knew what he did he knew he lost the first and he didn't want to lose again. he's very receptive and very much less receptive in 2020. >> there's all these conspiracy theories. talk to the audience in the way you do so well about where the proof is that he lost the election but give specifics about the women and how he lost to the food stand where he gained votes in the cities. >> if you listen to him talk he has a number of different theories about why of the

the electionwas stolen and whatl learn and the way i try to approach it in the book is in my two jobsik ago i tried to right-click the united states attorney and i take the approach if i have to prove this in court what would i do because that's what i'm trying to do with all of you if you have any doubts about this i want to address those issues, lay out the facts and let you draw your own conclusions but from the perspective of the evidence as when i was u.s. attorney. so a few things.nn one is it was stolen in pennsylvania andch philadelphia, michigan and detroit. you've heard him say this.

they showed up in detroit. they were filling out ballots no one was accounted for there were more than people register to vote. you've heard all these things. we go through with the registration numbers are in pennsylvania and how there were significantly fewer people than voted than were registered to vote. we look at philadelphia. philadelphia donald trump got 3% more of the vote in 2020 then he did in 2016 in the city of philadelphia and joe biden got 1% less in philadelphia luna thn hillary clinton. i would argue that is a very unsuccessful steel job when llthere's 3% more so it is ill

logical. the other thing is wait a second when i went to bed donald trump was winning pennsylvania by 700,000 votes and then i wake up and he's losing by 80,000 votes. they stole it. no. we had an unusual election because we had the most mail-in ballots ever used in the history of the presidential election and each state decided differently how they were going to count the vote, in what order so for instance in ohio when you went to bed and looked at ohio, joe biden was winning ohio. when you woke up, donald trump one by nine points. by the same pennsylvania theory, trumpap stole ohio from biden. here's what happened. in ohio they casted the mail-in

ballots first. they were overwhelmingly in some places 70 to 75% democrat for two reasons.ul democrats were generally more fearful to go out and vote in person. second donald trump said all summer and fall don't trust of the mail-in ballots.ep so republican voters didn't vote by mail. they voted at the machine that today. they counted all the mail-in votes first. biden was up by seven points. we are watching at ebc because we didn't know which way they were doing it until we started asking the questions.

then they count the machine votes and there is a 16-point swing. trump went down to up by nine. pennsylvania could be backup. they started to count the machine votes and donald trump was up by 700,000 votes. then they count the mail-in votes and he loses by ed. a very similar swing. last in pennsylvania something that happened all across the country is why donald trump was the first republican presidential candidate.

in 2016 versus 2020, donald trump lost those counties by 104,000 more than two hillary clinton. he lost both times by more than 2016. if you need to know why he lost he lost pennsylvania for the same reason. white, educated suburban voters gave a chance in 2016 and largely abandoned him in 22 and i am sure in this town with a greater percentage both women and men voted far less for trump in 2020 than 2022.

it could apply to your silver friends of yours there's no question that's whatan happenedo him. that's where he lost in michigan and wisconsin over and over again it was the suburbs outside detroit in philadelphia. i talk about one anecdotal story in the book a woman that shall remain nameless who'd been a volunteer with my gubernatorial campaigns and saw me leaving and said governor, what's going to happen and i said i think it's going to be a lotde closer than people think but i think biden is going to win. she looked down and started shaking her head.

ii said i know you're disappointed. she said no, i voted for biden. i looked at her and said you voted for biden? why. she said i couldn't listen to that voice for another four years. so, part of what we need to understand and this is why it is difficult to accept it because it wasn't a rejection of the politics, itrs was a rejection f him personally by a groupie of voters and i can tell you as somebody that's been on the ballot and that has won and lost first of all winning is much betterpe and second losing is intensely personal. politics is different than sports. sports you have a good day or about a day sometimes you win and sometimes the other person is better it doesn't mean that

you're rejected it just means that day the other guy was better. in politics, they looked at you and looked at the other person and said i don't want you. it is intensely personal so when people wonder why he's having such a hard time accepting it in part he knows what i just said is absolutely true and we go through all the others. >> that is a good segue into my last question then we will take questions from the audience. tell us in your review right now

there's an effort in the legislature to federalize voting rights and voting systems.w can you tell us your view on federalize thing that and what you would do? >> in congress they want to federalize all thee rules. each state is different. how we could ever think the voting rules that wouldgo be god for wyoming would be good for new jersey when wyoming has the least populated and the challenges that we face in voting and accommodations we havet to make are significantly different. second, the constitution i think is pretty clear that these decisions are supposed to be

made by individual states. i go back to the federal government what could possibly go wrong. imagine the federal government will be charged with counting all the votes so instead of having all the really great people that we have when we go hothere paid a little bit but nt nearly as much imagine they'll get replaced and federal employees come in. what we need to do is look at what happened. usually you have ten or 12,000 paper ballots and every other time it's all in the machine. this time we had a multiple of

that almost 200,000 paper ballots, the same number of machines because they couldn't get ready that quickly. covid comes in march of 2020. you can't order those machines and get them here by november. one of the things i think all of us in this state in particular given then number we have across the country is not assume we are going to go back in 2022 or 2024 to a small amount i think some people have gotten used to that and they like it and i think we will have more overtime so we better get more machines to count these votes because the other reason we have so many conspiracy theories is the longer it takes for us to tell you who won the more you're wondering what are they up to.

who's messing around with this and it's just i talk about that a little bit in the book it's a natural american thing that goes all the way back to the founding of the country. of the conspiracy theories about politics throughout the founding and that's what happenss in the free society where people express their opinions. they don't have to be right they just have to be opinions. one of the lines he use to use all the time as i made my wife promise when i die she would bury me in hudson county so i can remain active in politics. [laughter] >> i want to make clear to you i'm not saying irregularities didn't happen and by the way they have been in new jersey.

it happens all the time. the question is there's enough to change the results let alone in the five states that would been necessary and that i think we proven the book is not possible so that i think is an important thing to remember. ifth you think you don't trust e county clerk to count the votes, wait until a federal bureaucrat discounting your vote. forget it. conspiracy theories will be tripled and quadrupled in that scenario. at least we know who it is and we can kick her out. you're not going to be be able to get rid of a federal bureaucrat in inas charge of the

process. >> if anybody has questions then we can move to the audience. >> there's a microphone right iu the middle and i think we need to use the microphone not t because i can't hear you without it but because the tv guys are here tonight. >> my question is if the biden administration [inaudible] do you think mainstream media will turn against them? >> not completely against them, no because the mainstream media in the country is slanted towards' the left. there can't be a question about that anymore. they are almost playing it out. it's almost never not 3-1. it's always 3-1. they run a poor republican to

sit in there with me but most of the time it is 3-1 and that is on one of the networks if you go to the news networks they revel in their slander. cnn and msnbc are reveling in the leftward slant. they think it is profitable for anthem and talks at a rightward slant so i say to folks all the time you should watch a little bit of both so you realize that there are two different worlds we are livingg in right now, two different ways to look at issues and most the time you're going to come back to the way you think about things but that's why if you look at the bottom we still get actual newspapers. our kids are like are you kidding. what do you get a newspaper for, just go on your phone. but we still get them if you look at the bottom of the

driveway, there's three newspapers every day. "the wall street journal," the conservative side of things, "the new york times" so i know what the enemy is thinking and "the new york post" just to have fun. [laughter] i think you should get a taste into the same thing with mainstream media on tv as well. i painfully watch, when i do watch i go back and forth between cnn -- i can't watch msnbc to be honest, i can't. it's too much for me but i will go back and forth between cnn and fox because i want to seey how whatever the big stories of the day or how they cover them differently and what you're going to find when they cover them completely differently and they emphasize which stories. so should it be a day like let's say there's a big story on wall

street and a big story in washington, d.c. cnn will cover the washington, d.c. story with nothing but the democratic members of the house and senate and democratic pendants commenting on it. fox news won't cover the washington story unless it is really big they won't cover the wall street story either. they will cover immigration and there will be stories about immigration at the border and then everybody's taking a different approach to things and i think it's educational to watch all of it as much as you can put up with because it helps for me at least talking to people on the other side as to why they think some of the things they think and theys thik it because that is what they are hearing on the news they are watching. i don't know t if we have any he of [inaudible]

>> i happen to think one of the biggest failings isn't the biggestte in the country but the state of the inner city public schools. it creates a generation of failure and i know why the democratic party can't get there but we see the lines of people desperate to get their kids into charter schools and anything to not go to the public school they are at. why hasn't it taken hold in the populations whoo live there to get beyond school choice and school vouchers and charter school because the parties that they are voting for is entrenched and absolutely no supporting that and then the cycle is perpetuated and never gets better. i can't understand why that population hasn't moved to the charter school argument which can't be supported by the other party. >> i would say there's two reasons. the first one is habit.

folks in the inner cities have gotten into the habit of voting democrat and they just have a hard time breaking that habit unless republicans aggressively campaign their and make the argument. i would tell you i think in the main party they've done a lousyy job to make that argument. republicans many of them tend to be uncomfortable going into those communities and making those arguments and i think that it's foolhardy if you look at what happened in 2013 after four years of arguing public education wasas failing and arguing why we got more votes in

new york, we one union city. we have 62% of the vote in 2013. but i tried to argue all across the country is you've got to go to places you are not comfortable in and go to those places making arguments that you know that group of voters needs to hear and to me you are right that the education issue in virginia just showsil this. the education issue will cut across parties. parents care most about w their children and want their children to get a good education and i will tell you the biggest supporters i had were the passers of most of the major churches in places like newark and camden, new paris. of all denominations including

muslim mosques places patterson because they say to me when i was governor we are tired of seeing the children who sit in the pew every sunday constantly failed by the public school system. the reason it doesn't take hold is that the teachers union across this country spends an exorbitant amount of money making sure that it doesn't do so like i hear now in our state and i hear the current governor touting that we have the best schools in america. okay for some kids. now he's the democrat supposed to be the one who cares more about the underprivileged yet he won't sayre one word about the failure in our urban schools

because to do thatte would run counter to his hatred in the teachers union. if you all saw when i ran in ten and 11, they beat me senseless. the money they spent was extraordinary and i decided to end it on a more upbeat funny note in 2010 we were in the midst of the first big fight with the teachers union. all four children were in one of the suvs with the troopers going someplace i don't remember where but we were on the turnpike and we had gotten through and up to the left was one of those turnpike billboards and was a picture of me and it said chris christy beats children. [laughter]ic and it was an awful picture of

me. [laughter] at that sign our son, patrick who, for those of you here that know our family, our son who is the straw that serves the drink in our house, 10-years-old at the time, i didn't know they noticed. i saw but i hoped they didn't see it. he says hey dad, your people have to get better pictures of you. [laughter] and i said did you read with the billboard said? those are not my people. he said i don't know, it was a really bad picture. [laughter] hi, governor christy. you brought up governor burns ia hudson county so i'm compelled to tell a story that goes back to 1985 when brendan burns was supporting a democratic candidate for senator and he

happened to have a person in new jersey at the time. he gets up and looks at bradley and says i don't understand why you happen to be running as a democrat because most of the democrats i know follow the same pattern. they get elected, invited and sentenced. i had a similar experience in my old job. on another note, i wanted to ask about october 202nd at an event that you happened to be there which was the sort of garden party preceding the debate between biden and trump. i think we all know what happened subsequent to that namely trump obviously tested positive and there were all sorts of supporters sitting in

those chairs, yourself includedh how do you feel that at the time, he knew he had the virus, how do you feel about him now, a gentle man you supported for president in terms of his loyalty to his closest associates and putting them in essentially imperial as a result of this test that he had for testing positive? >> a few things about that to gently correct the record a little bit. my understanding is he tested positive the next day from what i've read now. it doesn't change the thesis of the question except for what happened the day before. the day before, everybody was sitting there. i don't believe, by the way, that event was a super spreader event. but the people that god covid

only three people were at the party who were not involved at the debate prep. one of them as father jenkins of notre dame. there were two others. i'm convinced we all got covid in the debate prep. a seven of us including the president and the six of us got covid. it is disturbing to me to have heard for the first time a day or two ago in mark meadows book that the president tested positive prior to him sitting closer than i am to you for four days and preparing him for the debates. there is a story in the book about after i got put in the hospital, he was in the hospital as well and he called me and of

thestory now makes more sense te than it did any time up until owtwo days ago. he called me and said how are you doing and i said not well. a really bad and you sound bad. he said yeah can you believe to tough guys like us got this thing? we are so tough. how could this have gotten us. we are like the two toughest guys in america. [laughter] i don't know either, mr. president. he then got to the point of the call and said so how do you think you got it. i said i don't know, mr. president. i'm pretty confident hse i got t the white house. about six of the seven of us got it, who knows who patient zero was. i don't know but obviously got it at the white house. he then said to me you're not going to blame it on me are you. and i said why would i blame it

on you. i don't think you're the one who gave it to me. it happened in that room but i don't know. he said to see you are not going to tell the press that i gave it to you. i said i wouldn't say that because i don't know that it's true. now up until two days ago, my thought process of that was that was just donald trump's paranoia that he didn't want to be blamed. i was always a little bit suspicious because every one of us besides him got tested every day before we went in. so the process was during that time he went to the white house, got admitted, someone escorted you to the eisenhower building next door and that's where the medical unit is. you go to the medical unit and they swab you. you sit there 15 minutes, they get the results. if you are negative you are authorized to go to the west wing. i was always a little bit

suspicious as to whether one of us got a false positive, false negative rather or whether it was him because he was the only oneer we didn't know whether he was getting tested every day were not. we wouldn't know. he is the president. i think especially how bad my u experience was and in the intensive care unit for seven days and a couple moments feeling like it was going to go the wrong way, finding that out a couple days ago if in fact what he says is true because he tries to hedge it a little bit in the book he says he got a negative test after that so they were not sure. but at a minimum what we were owed everybody in that room, me, kellyks and conway, stephe

miller, jason miller the only one who didn't get it but the rest of us were all owed to be told that because i will tell you this we all would have wore masks. b we didn'te because we said we ae getting tested every day. that's why i wasn't wearing a mask at that event because every single person sitting at that event all hadad been tested befe they were allowed to come in and all of us tested negative. but what i said afterwards, and whatever the president did, he's got to live with his own conscience. i'm not going to be able to impose guilt o on him if in fact he was positive but when i will tell you is that for me i said

tthis after i got out of the hospital it was a mistake for me not to wear the mask. i became convinced that i was in a safe zone because all of us had been tested and i was wrong. now i probably know why i was wrong. i didn't know then but i should have just wear the mask of the whole time it would have been an extra layer of safety that's why i said the stuff i said afterwards. but as you might imagine when we both saw that pop up on our phones earlier this week early in the morning, we had an interesting reaction. as you mentioned the irregularities that you agreed don't you believe the democratic party developed a system and

that they are implementing it for the town they control and the mail-in ballots they are reusing the system and we have to be concerned. i know certain areas are highly controlled by the democratic people. they use machines and do all the things to influence and there's a lot of fraud going on so doing that and also especially in the school systems when they graduate they become 90% democratic so it's just a system and corruption and we say it doesn't exist. i'm feeling it's gotten to that

point.ow you see this assembly in the senate they know how to win it. they have that recipe. >> let me respond to a few things there. i don't disagree with most of what you said except that theyar didn't steal the presidential election. it's just hard. i mean,, seriously think about this for a r second. you think joe biden masterminded a nationwide conspiracy to steal votes in six different states? joe biden couldn't mastermind a one car funeral let alone that typepe of operation and have ito be unfound. now, yes the rules of using the educational system in a way to try to indoctrinate our children in a certain thought process absolutely.

that's a different fight. this whole idea about not having to show id and somehow it's discriminatory. i went to new york city eight or nine weeks ago and i walked into anng office building to go to a meeting. i walk up to the security guard. he says governor, i'm such a big fan. thank you. can i come around and take a p picture. he comes aroundlf the security desk, gets out his phone, prints out my visitor pass. can youut sign the visitor pass, can i have your autograph, absolutely. then he goes back, sits down. can i see your id.

[laughter] i said you are convinced enough that i am me that you took a picture with me and had me give you an autograph you stillll wat to see an ied. he said i'm sorry it's the rules. okay i got my wallet and i gave it to him. if i have to do that to answer an office building in manhattan to go to a meeting why shouldn't i have to show the people in the firehouse my drivers license when i come to vote? i am a bad example because i walk in here and if they don't know me it's a problem, but i inthink everybody should have to show an id. one of the things i did when i was governor about the voter rolls in this state is i am mandated the county's updated

voter role. we knocked a lot of dead people off the voter role. a lot of people moved during my eightta years as governor. now it's got to be a constant process because people move all theet time of the roles and new jersey are in a better shape than they were before. last i think they are going to continue to be a factor and i don't want republicans complaining about it anymore. you know what they do. they send out the ballot. they send a piece of mail saying you gotor your ballot here's how you return it and they call four or five times and say have you filledal out your ballot yet. then they text you and e-mail you. it's not the turnout anymore. they drag the votes out of the

houses. there's no reason we can't do that with the same technology it only makes it a little bit harder. i've done both so that part of it we will always be disadvantaged but i was at an event a week before the election this year for senator eddie fundraising event and a woman raised her hand and asked a question about 101.5 what are w going to do if this keeps happening. i looked at herg and said he's not going to determine any election and i said it will be because we don't know how to do

mail-in balloting. it turned out six days later i was exactly right. onle the machine, jack was elecd governor and cast the votes and he loses by 75,000 votes. do i think it was stolen, i don't but the bigger point is we have a bunch of things we have to do and i talk about it in the book for us to continue to be a competitive and viable party. moaning and complaining and looking in the rearview mirror at past elections never helps you to win the next one ever. voters don't want to hear about that stuff. that's not why they voted for you. the last story i will tell you on that we had rebuilt the

boardwalk five months. a guy comes up to me and says you're running for reelection. why should i vote for you. look at this boardwalk. do you think we are going to get this done. what do i get for voting for you next time. voters think about tomorrow not yesterday. that shows we are a hopeful country. we think tomorrow canan be bettr than yesterday. we don't want to dwell out tomorrowhe looking at yesterday. stop the grievance into the moaning and complaining. find in the places we can fight, fight to get voter id and to do better one the mail-in ballots and to make sure the counties clean up the voter rolls, take those things out of clay and then the ideas versus their ideas will bet okay. in the election where we lost we

picked up six seats in the assembly and the senate and a lot ofhe local seats, so accept from the times on the ticket election day was very good for republicans across the state and i think it sends a clear message to the legislative democrats who if you watch are going to be much more reluctant because they all are back up in 2023 with a new ballot and that is redistricting. we've got a map right now. think about this i go to 60% of the vote. we didn't pick up one seat. if that isn't gerrymandering, i don't knowti what is. 60% of the vote will tell you everything you needp. to know.

we could be in control of theue legislature. >> i always like to say one last question which i will say but it thas to have a short answer. >> we will see to show people you don't run everything. [laughter] i'm going to do these but i will make them short answers. >> i will make it a straightforwardic question also. >> looking forward like we've been talking about tonight and especially the midterms and even 24, how do you think the republican party best unites itself nationally where you still have a section of the party that would like to see a new face in 24 and even sooner and another that very much likes

president trump. is this a good model for everywhere, does it vary? what are your thoughts on that? >> first, never forget the other side unites us like we could never unite all resolved. by the way, same with democrats. donald trump united the democrats more than the democrats have been united in my lifetime. so, remember part of this process is what are they doing we have to stop them and republicans are willing to pute down something different in order to stop that. the second piece we've got to starts talking about the things the voters care about. it isn't about what the candidate thinks is important but with the voters think are important. so part of what we need to do is

get ourselves back into that mode of thinking. and we haven't been. we have been yelling and complaining of screaming about things that most didn't care about not once but twice in 18 and 20 so we need to listen. thank you. >> i will try to make it fairly quick. you know, needless to say having been a public figure i think everything was long aware of president trump's foibles and personality quirks and so forth. he came in saying i will do certain things and by and large, he did them. and i would say as someone that typically voted republican i've eroften been disappointed by my party in terms of failure to

keep promises made during the campaign. so too often we will do this and nothing is done except for the fact he affect a skating rink after nonsense. he built a golf club on a dump in a short period of time. .. built he moved the the embassy in israel to the capital of israel when it had been said this will happen this will happen and so, you know, we're looking if somebody's going to be a a more acceptable alternative to the foibles and personality problems. then we though want somebody who is still going to do what he says. yeah. i don't know why our party has often disappointed us. well, if you talk to democrats, they'll say the same thing.

and and there'd be a bunch of democrats who will say that as well. so i don't think it's unique to our party. but what i will say is look in the main i agreed with the things that president trump tried to do. there's some things where we differ, but they're not hugely significant things. here's where i part company with it. you can't stand up. behind the seal the president united states in the east room of the white house at 2:30 am on election night. tell the american people that the election was stolen and not present any evidence to support that. the words of the president united states matter more than the words of a new york real estate developer. he continued to talk like he was in new york real estate developer when he was the president of the united states. and the american people want to believe what the president tells them any president? whether you voted for them or not. you want to believe what he said

it would have been like barack obama standing up that night in april. of 2012 and saying osama. bin laden is dead. and then he wasn't. what will we have thought at that moment? that's something of enormous gravity to the american people like an election. after what bin laden did to this country the idea that someone would say that he had been killed, but he wasn't. would have been something that we were never accept in the context of a president. saying that an election was stolen and not presenting any evidence to back that up. here we are 13 months later. he's still saying the same thing. to me that creates a huge. credibility problem that diminishes what you just talked about? and i said this to the president the saturday after the election. said if you don't either present the evidence that it was stolen now.

or can see the election. you are going to diminish your legacy. in a way that will damage you personally and damage the party for a long time. and so i agree with you that there are many things. he said he would do that. he got done. there were a number of things. he said he would do that. he didn't get done but you could say that about anybody who gets elected to office. but election night was the to me a line. that made it impossible for me. to say that's okay. because it's just not. and we all get into this business knowing that we can win or lose. and sometimes you think it isn't fair. i've lost elections. i thought weren't fair. that's the deal. you stand up. like an adult and you say i think that was fair. but the votes we counted the people have spoken. and i'll live to fight another

day. and that's where i think the divide is now and that was not something that was not necessary to do. and not welcoming the bidens to the white house. inaugural morning not going to the inauguration. look you think hillary clinton? wanted to be sitting there on january of 2017 at donald trump's inaugural. you think al gore? wanted to be sitting there. 2001 at george w. bush's inaugural you know anything george bush 41. want to be sitting there at bill clinton's inaugural? i am confident. would have rather have had elective root canal. they've been sitting there, but they went and not only did they go they welcomed. the victor to the white house and said this is the way we do it in this country. it's a peaceful transfer of power.

where the vanquished? congratulate the victor. and we leave with grace and dignity. he didn't do any of that. and i think it's diminished him. and it diminished our country in the process. you can still say i don't think it's fair outgore fought like crazy against george w bush for 34 days in court all the way the us supreme court. but with the us supreme court ruled even though al gore lost five to four. he didn't say hello that i'm not listening to the supreme court, and i'm not moving out of the naval observatory. i'm staying. i'm still the vice president. you know, he could see it. he went out he welcomed. bush to the naval observatory they met and they showed the country that this is the way we operate. and that's why we've operated in the main. for the last 250 years. and i think that's one that the president should have done much differently. thanks, governor governor big supporter my wife and i drove up from the shore just to be here

and we're glad we did would love to see you as our candidate in 2024, but going back to your point a little while ago about how your own constituents felt about trump and not wanting to hear that voice. i worked for a company that's based in the midwest and i spent a lot of time out there. there's a lot of good right thinking people out there, but when it comes to new yorkers or anybody from the northeast, they're like we don't really get them. we really don't want to you know, and we talk too fast. we don't give a chance to hear what we're saying to them and they took a chance on trump. and they feel they got burnt. how would somebody like you overcome what's become a bias against the northeast. thanks to donald. well, i would say to you that the they did take a chance on trump in some parts of the midwest. and other quiet places they didn't. i could tell you you know when i was in, iowa. spread the decent amount of time there in 2015. there is definitely you got to

come uphill a little bit. if you come for the northeast. and you have a vowel at the end of your name? it's a little tough, you know. but i think that you know for any of us. our own authenticity has to be what we rely upon. you know, there are plenty of people because believe me i see social media. there's plenty of people don't like me. that's okay. you know, that's their right. but i even the people who don't like me. most of them don't call me a phony. they have gotten to know me and don't like me. okay. that's fine. that's their call. it's politics. but i think that we can't. back away from authenticity and i think quite frankly that one of the reasons trump got elected. was because people said all

right. look. may not say everything the way i'd like to say it, but man, i think he means it. and i think that's who he is. and and as a result, some people were willing to a chance on him. based upon that authenticity so i still think the single most important thing in a candidate. is authenticity and you can tell when they're not. you know you look at certain candidates. and i ran against a bunch of them in 2016. he's looking. oh, yeah, no chance. you know, they're they're sitting there trying to think of what the answer should be. and try to figure out what it is you want to hear? and then give it back to you. and the american people are proving themselves in the main to be a lot smarter than that. and so i think the only way to overcome any of any bias. northeastern bites against the southern candidate mm-hmm, you know, there's no doubt that exists, you know, talk about a weird accent. you know, they think we have one look at them. but there's always going to be

that buys i think. you know certain candidates overcome that with with their approach their personality their authenticity. that's all we can rely on. i know i said only three but then this good moment stood up and i certainly yeah. yeah. she's the only woman who stood up. i'm certainly i am not telling her to sit down and i'm leaving. alright, no chance if i got to get in trouble with this woman not to get trouble with that woman. i'm okay with that. thank you for indulging me. no problem. thank you you for getting up. so i i do. and i did vote for biden. i will say that. but i think what people need to understand is that biden was a placeholder. he was a viable candidate to trump and that was really it it wasn't because people were so in love with biden and that's partly what biden is struggling now because he's also the independence. he's going way over to the left and everyone's like what the hell are you doing?

you know truly that's how a lot of us are feeling. i'm so glad c-span's here to see this. go ahead. keep going. no, it's fine. i'm glad to say it because i really i really feel like i feel even the majority of biden voters are feeling that way. but my question to you is you i think at this point represent a minority. to some extent of your party that come in someone that's standing up to the and conspiracies and so forth and i'm wondering if donald trump and his minions so to speak start going after you. they have and what are you going to do? how are you going to react because i would much rather see you on the ballot than well, thank you. i here look i'll react like a you all have watched me long time. morris county even longer than new jersey and certainly new jersey longer than the country. i'll give you the president attacked me a week or so ago. and and talked about my approval rating when i left, new jersey when i left the governorship. now. look my approval rating was bad enough when i left. he made it worse. he lied about it to make it

worse. like i thought to myself why didn't you just tell the truth? he was really bad when i left so you could have just used the the real number and it would have been terrible. and and my response to him was well, i don't know. donald when i ran for reelection, i got 60% of the vote when you ran you lost a joe biden. that's what i'll do. i mean look. donald trump has never gotten in a fight with me. i believe because he knows i know how to fight back. he fights in the mane with people. can't fight back. and and you'll notice if you remember back to the 16 race, i was like one of the only guys or women on stage. that didn't get a nickname. well energy jab little marco lions ted. crazy john, you know i didn't get one. um, and i'm susceptible to any

number of nicknames that clearly could have thought of. and let me see something about what you said about your vote for biden. you know. i said this to trump in 2017 mary pat was there. we went for lunch with the president. on valentine's day 2017 office three weeks and he called and invited us to come down and have lunch with him. he wasn't exactly my idea of valentine's day, you know meal but i got to bring mary i got to bring you so it was okay. and and he said to me. like look around. can you believe i'm here, you know, and he was showing me the oval officer and i was like, well, yeah sure you won and we sat down to talk about it at lunch and i said to him remember something. you didn't win this election. she lost it. i see that mr. president doesn't matter. because your hand was on the bible on january 20th, you're sleeping upstairs. you're sitting in this office. it doesn't matter. but now you need to make the

next four years about you. so that you because you'll be the one being judged for years from now. and i said the same thing happened to me. and what i want to know nine. i didn't win. john corzine lost i mean, i'm not a big enough ego maniac to think that everybody went. oh my god. what i really want is chris christie. they went. oh my god. i don't want john corson anymore. is this guy reasonable? and i like biden looked like the reasonable alternative. to someone that they had already rejected. so i understand exactly what you mean. and by the way, that's how trump got elected in 16 in my opinion. hillary clinton this is demonstrated by the polling data on election day. was the single most unpopular presidential candidate on election day? in american history by the way, the second most unpopular

presidential candidate on election date american history was donald trump. but a little better than her. and so he won now when we when i told him that mary pad will tell he got so --. i won. i won in a landslide that's outrageous that she didn't lose. i beat her. i'm like look. you can think that. but it's just not true and you shouldn't be upset about it. don't get upset. i said like i felt the same way. i know that i course. i lost i didn't win but what i did mr. president was every day. i went to my campaign manager the day after the election in '09. 'cause we won with 48 and a half percent of the vote in a three-way race. i looked at i said. every day from here on out. your job is to figure out how we build that coalition what i need to do to convince as many of the 51 and a half percent of the people who didn't vote for me to

vote for me next time. if donald trump had done that. he'd still be in the white house today. instead what he did? was decided just to play to his base. and when that happens in a close election you don't bring the country together. you wind up going down? and it's your right again. it's exactly what's happened to joe biden right now. joe biden promised to be united and to bring the country together. and return it to normalcy. and then he comes in and he goes way left. to the base of his party. the exact same mistake that trump made and doesn't try to bring the country together and bring more people in. remember in in 2013 when i got reelected. i got 51% of the latino vote. i got 29% of the african-american vote. four years earlier i'd gotten

11% of the african-american vote and 33% of the latino vote. that didn't happen. by miracle it's because we worked every day to reach out to those folks who didn't vote for us. ask them why. and try to deal with the issues they were concerned about. so i absolutely agree with you independence of abandoned biden for the moment because biden abandon them first. they didn't leave him. he left them. they're standing in the middle of the country going. where the hell joe biden go. he's all the way over there. with elizabeth warren and bernie sanders the democratic rejected elizabeth warren and bernie sanders and and kamala harris because they were too liberal. they nominated the 78 year old guy. for two reasons he was in the middle and they wanted to beat trump. and they knew those other ones couldn't.

so i don't understand why this is so complicated. i really don't and maybe i'm just getting too old. and i've seen too much. but it's pretty simple on how to try to govern and win this country. and winning is the hardest part but once you get there. whether it's the power of a governorship. or the power of the presidency you have the ability. to be able to bring people together. you just have to decide to do it. and i'm disappointed that trump didn't. disappointed that biden isn't and i think the american people said the pretty clear signal in 2020. they're probably gonna have to send send it again in 2024. that we want someone who is going to bring the country together. tired of being divided tired of not being able to go to a cocktail party and have a conversation about politics. we're tired of people yelling at us because we have a bumper

sticker on our car. we're tired of people giving us a hard time because of what we believe. and when i grew up in politics that wasn't the way it was. and i think we can bring it back. this book is an effort. start with my own party. it's always easy for me to lecture democrats, right? why don't you run as an independent? well, right and my point is you could probably win right? i mean because let the sides go to the sides and you have little candidate is gonna win. that's right. what you what you need to as a republican. start with your own party. and and and start with you talking to them about these. and look either i'll convince people or i won't. but that's what this business is all about. they should say when i was governor all the time when the press would say to me. well the polls. say this if i'd say to them well my job is to change polls not to follow polls.

if you are a persuasive leader. your job is to change polls not to follow them. so, you know, i hope that that's what this book starts to do. i know this much at least it started a conversation rupert murdoch gave his speech three days. later. at the news corp cheryl's meeting where he said donald trump is wrong. the election wasn't stolen we have to stop talking about it. we're gonna fight for the future and we have to stop worrying about the past if trump doesn't stop talking about it that he can't be a part of the future. well if the head of fox news is saying that we may be starting to get someplace. so that's why i did the book. and that's why we started the conversation. and i'm glad you were the last question because i think that's a great place for us to end. i want to say one thing besides. thanking my wife not only for tonight, but for putting up with me for the last 35 years. is that this place? is really special to us.

we've been here 30 years. and we've been made to feel welcome here for all 30 years that we've been here. when we were brand new. you know residents with no children and nobody knew who we were. to being a freeholder. and then being the governor that had those suvs idling outside of every place for eight years all around town with the guys with the wires in their ears at least for that time. you lived in the safest town in new jersey and guarantee that there's no problem there. you definitely lived in the safest place but through all those ups and downs. you know there were times that were difficult. and when they have those difficult times of public life and you come home. you want to not have to worry about going out at home? and i can tell you that when things were great. everybody here was great too, but when things weren't great everybody here was great, too. even when they disagreed with me. they didn't in a way that was

respectful of the fact that we're one of you. and so, you know, we thank you for that because you provided us a community. to raise all four of our children. in a way that we wanted to and when they were in the public spotlight you made it better not worse. you didn't make them feel different. and that on the soccer fields or on the little league fields, or are the football fields. you guys made them feel like they were just four more kids. in mendham and that made our lives a lot easier. so thank you for coming tonight and thank you for all of that. i appreciate it. thank you governors. thank you governor. thank you.