>> we can see the division showing up with people identifying it in extremes of ideology between democrats and republicans on various issues especially around race and i think it's good to know what's a generation and what's changed but look at this across decades.

>> too many people chris christie is known as governor, news panelist, national spokesperson and "new york times" best-selling author. also a career that extends

having been successful on wall street as well as holding the titleit of first lady and doinga number of programs always very well received. but friends, families, neighbors, coaches. we are pleased to have them in our community. as a matter of fact, just three years ago almost three years ago, chris christie's first book came out, let me finish, that he was gracious enough and it was sold out on february evening. i'm pleased to say with the second book we were able to do a fundraiser and jumped for joy and myself and my fellow boardre members said let's go for it and here we are again. that evening three years ago and tonight are sellouts so you could say tonight the book

signing is as tough as hamilton on broadway. mary pat will moderate and chris will try to answer the questions are good around the questions, wewe don't know yet. then we will have some q-and-a. please don't be bashful, ask questions. without further ado, mary pat and chris christie. [applause] >> thank you. let me make sure that i don't have any feedback. this is great. a nice cozy group and i just want to say thank you to peter and the board. the library has been an important part of our life and our families lives for the last 30n years, which is amazing we'e

been here for 30 years. we appreciate all that the libraries do. i actually just paid a $40 fine to the library two weeks ago. i had to pick up a book and i guess i haven't been in a couple of years. i paid my $40 fine. [laughter] you don't even want to know. thank you everybody for coming out here. it's been ans interesting journy these last six or seven months that it's taken to write this book and what i want to start out with to ask why he wrote it and also ask him to tell you a little bit about the process of writing it. >> thanks everybody for being here tonight.. it's great to be home.t i've been on the road most of the last two and a half weeks except a couple of days 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 and it's good to have my last official book at home so thank you for coming out tonight. i decided to write the book, we went away for a few days after joe biden's inaugural and then we decided to take a few days down in florida to relax after what had been a more grueling than normal tv schedule because of all the racing around of the election so we went to florida for a few days and i was sitting at the pool thinking to myself this is one of the worst two years the republican party have in a long time. we lost the majority of the house of representatives 2018

and then the senate and the white house in 2020. it struck me as somebody involved in this for a long time that it may have been one of the worst times we ever had. since the founding in 1860 the last time after this one was 1930 to 1932 when herbert hoover was president of the united states t and lost the house and senate. whatte happened after that, 28 f the next 36 years and so it struck me that maybe somebody who had been a big supporter of president a trump's needed to write a book about how we start to win again.

there's a number of republicans who were. i don't think they had credibility in writing this book. people i think were consistent but i had concerns about where the party is headed, the direction we were going into the immediate aftermath and what we need to do to get back on track. the process of writing the book is you pitch the book to publishers and we had a couple publishers who were interested but all of y them said if you're going to try to that kind of book the first part has to be about your interaction the last year and a half of the administration after let me finish, the first book ended, through to 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 it's kind of a recounting of stories and incidences that happened. that's where i started at the w.

i have a collaborator. we get together and agree on the topics we are discussing that day. he starts asking me questions and i start talking. they send a transcription back then we have the chapter transcriptions. then when we get done with the others another that has to do the research to make sure that everything that we say that we are completely sure of is actually true. i will give you one example where i was absolutely sworn that this was a correct recollection i had a friend of

line who was murdered and i was telling the story at that time. itmy was a day before school started, my senior year in high school so we write the book and then come back and he said are you sure it was the day before school started, absolutely sure. i remember like it was yesterday. at this woman found at thehe frt page of the weekly paper and it was the day before the starting of school myar junior year. i guarantee if you put a gun to my head and said if you're wrong we are going to blow your brains out i would have said go ahead because i know. i absolutely know it. so, roberta plays a role in the process by researching

everything we talk about to make sure that we haveir it right. first and foremost for the integrity of the book and second theso lawyers at symantec schusr want to make sure we don't say anything that is wrong so we don't all get sued. a chapter by chapter comes in. we are working on it together. maybe the initial changing and my boys and we go back and forth on each chapter two to three times' he makes suggestions, i make suggestions and we go back and forth by e-mail and then we get the manuscript done and send it to our editor. will send it back with notes things she wants us to say more or add and we are only very tight deadline because to start a book when we started in march

to have it out by november is apparently like land speed record for publishing. she then decided she wanted an additional chapter and she sent this to us by e-mail. she said did you read the latest e-mail and i said no, not yet. he said don't. i'm going to break it to you gently, she wants another chapter so what we did is we were on the phone with each other and i said we talked about a lot in the book in the first part. i think you need to do a chapter

on that. by the way, turn on your tape recorder, let'swo go and we started to go. the last thing you do is you write the dedication and the acknowledgment the front of the book is to our four children and the acknowledgment the whole lot of people who contribute to helping me in this part of my life and career. when you're finally done and hit sendei and they acknowledge that they received it you don't want to see it again. you don't want to see a bookt until it looks like that and when it does you look at the

cover and the title page. i have not looked at the text since i sent it back out. i think it's great but on the final copy they still have the red cross flag.

that will tell you how little. it was a catch. i've written this book in the same process for let me finish as well. s in particular the john birch society and i think they might find that interesting.

i thought i had a place in the historical context. 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 and60 early 60s became a site for the republican party very much one that have an anti-semitic stream to it. it ran into a number of conspiracy theoriese in that regard and became a force in the republican party. and a thought leader in the conservative movement was horribly disturbed by these developments and by the development of seeing how prominent the society was becoming. so he approached barry goldwater and knowing that he was

considering running for president in 1964 he said look, we should do this together and push back on these people. and if we do so to gather i think we can have an impact on the party. so i will write the first editorial, the national review and then you write a letter to the editor of the national review supporting the editorial. he is worried that if he does this he won't win the nomination

so he writes a very short letter to buckley which is nothing like what they agreed upon. so he decides he's not going to publish it at first and he goes to somebody else to see who has credibility in the movement. at that time not even an elected official. he'd given a speech and 64 on behalf of goldwater early on and reagan had become a very popular figure in the conservative movement because of the speech. he would be elected to two years later as governor of california but reagan stood up and wrote a long and passionate letter as a

former democrat as to why he thought they were not somebody we should be embracing or empowering and it absolutely 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 that is directly john birch language. he lost monumentally. in fact the little morris county historical note. from 64 to 2020 they rejected goldwater and rejected trump in 2020 and there's an interesting.

i think it says something about the comparison it's an interesting chapter to place the chapters that follow into context. i hate when i hear this. we are in the most dangerous time in the history of the country. we are more divided than we've ever been in our history. i have someone say george came to me and said i don't know. it seems to be the civil war was probably a time that we were more divided than we are now, just a random thought. but maybe we can inject a little common sense and the hyperbole.

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 party recovered. they became once again a national force at the presidential level because we got back to basics and that's part of what the book is all about. >> along the same lines as history repeats itself i loved when you were doing debate prep with the president and youit wet in with examples of articles from previous presidents, incumbent presidents. tell what you told president trump and why your advice. >> i i watch all, close your eys

and picture this, i played hilary clinton. [laughter]eb in the debate prep for 2016. i didn't do the first debate in 2016. prepping for the first debate into the performance kind of reflected that. after the first debate he calls me and says will you do the second debate and i said only if i'm in charge of it and only if ii can decide who is in the room because if we are going to have everyone in the room i don't care to play. he said you're in charge so we did the debate prep for the second and third debate and one quick aside we didn't go to the second one. we watched the second debate at home.

they said it was so easy compared to debating you it was great. [laughter] he said you are a better hilary than she is. so you're going to do debate number three, right? so, 2020 comes and the staff comes to me, the chief of staff at the time was mark meadows and jared kushner, his son-in-law came to me and said we want you back into soto's the president. this was in july. the first was late september. he's not going to like this. it's too early. he needs a lot of work. i know he needs a lot of work

but t he's not going to like ths and they insisted that he was fine with it. 3:00 on saturday. we are sitting in the conference room and in walks the president from his round of golf. i'm sitting init the chair acros from him and he says what are you doing here. debate prep.

i had prepared and since the presidential debate restarted in 1976 and then and 76, gerald ford was way behind jimmy carter in the race coming out of the convention so he agreed to debate. there were articles that i had 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 president lost the first debate. every time. i went back and spoke to some of the folks and they all told me the same thing which i expected was presidents don't want to prep. this guy or woman over here i go into my briefcase and i said

debate prep is over. we are not doing anything else today. what i want you to do is go back tonight and read those articles. maybe i should talk in general and you can tell me. read the articles, mr. president. what are theyt about? he said is that true which is another indication about kind of the depth of historical knowledge of donald trump about politics. he just doesn't a have any so ts was all news to him. i gave it to him, walked out and they followed me out and i

looked like you are so full of crap. the guy was clearly surprised to see me there. so he read those articles. of course he didn't follow anye of the device but he read the articles and called a couple of days later. here was the conclusion that he drewuy from that. those other guys are so bad. i can't believe how bad all of them were. we can go into the preparation for the debates.

i'm in the middle of prepping them before the sunday debate. that kind of derailed us for aep little bit but he was very receptive to then preparations because he knew he wouldn't admit he lost the first debate and he didn't want to lose again so he was receptive. he was much less receptive. something the book talks a lot about our these conspiracy theories. talk to this audience in the way that you do so well about where the proof is that donald trump lost the election but the suburban women and where he lost

votes and gained votes in the cities. what we learn t after reading ad the way that i try to approach it in the book is in my jobs i tried to write it like the united states attorney and i take the approach if i had to prove this in court, what would iet do. if you have any doubts about this, i want to address those issues and lay out the facts and let you draw out your own conclusions. the theory is it was stolen in

pennsylvania, philadelphia, michigan and detroit. they were filling out ballots. there were significantly fewer people that voted that were hiregistered to vote. we look atel philadelphia. donald trump got 3% more of the vote in 2020 than in 2016 in the city of philadelphia and joe biden got one person less in philadelphia than hilary clinton. it's a very unsuccessful job when they get 3% more than the

guy you are trying to steal forget 1% less. of the other thing is wait a second, when i went to bed, donald trump was winning pennsylvania by 700,000 votes. we had a very unusual election in 2020 because we had the most mail-in ballots ever used in the history of the presidential election. each state decided to differently how theyrd were goig to count the votes. so for instance, in ohio when you went to bed and looked at ohio, joe biden was winning. when you woke up, donald trump one by nine points. by the same pennsylvania theory,

trump stole ohio from biden. here's what happened in ohio they cast the mail-in ballots first. if they were more fearful to go out to a polling place in second, donald trump says all summer and fall they are rigged. don'ty. trust the mail-in ballos to vote on election day. they count all the mail-in votes first. we are watching at abc so we

start to ask the question. they count the machine votes in ohio and it was 16 points away. trump went up nine and in pennsylvania it was the opposite. they decided to count the machine votes first up by 700,000 votes. then they count the mail-in vote. a very similar spring. in pennsylvania something that happened all across the country rsdonald trump was the first republican presidential candidatelp for the suburban

counties like philadelphia and delaware county, montgomery county. in 2016 versus 2020 they lost by 104,000 votes fan to hilary clinton.os he lost both times by 104,000 or in6. those suburban counties thn he lost the entire state. if you need to know why he lost pennsylvania he lost for the same reason white educated suburban voter gave the chance in 2016 largely abandoned in 2020. i'm sure in this town and a greater percentage by women than

men both women and men voted far less for trump fan 2020. there's no question that that's what happened to him. that's where he lost in michigan. over and over again outside milwaukee. i talk about one anecdotal story in w the book with a woman who shall remain nameless who'd been a volunteerto for both campaigns and she said what's going to happen tomorrow. it's going to be closer than

people think. i knew this woman was a strong republican. she worked for s me twice and i said i know you're disappointed. i looked at her and said you votede for biden? why. i couldn't listen to that voice. so part of what we need to understand and this is why it is difficult because it wasn't a rejection of the policies. it was a rejection of him personally by a group of voters and i can tell you as someone who's been on the ballot first of all winning is much better and second politics is

different. you have a good day or a bad day. it just means that day the other guy was better. in politics they look at a few into theth other person. people wonder accepting in part it's because he knows it was a personal rejection and we go through all the other numbers of others,ha different places we argued about.

>> that is a good segue and then we will take some questions from thee audience. right now there's an effort in the legislature to federalize the voting systems. can you tell us your view on federal lysing that and what you would do? how you could ever think it would be good for new jersey when wyoming is the least densely populated state in america. the challenges that we face, the accommodations we have to make are significantly different.

these decisions are supposed to be made by each individual. imagine the government is going to be in charge of counting all the votes, so instead of having the great people that we have in the firehouse when we. go there as volunteers pay a little bit but not nearlyel as much. imagine those people will get replaced and federal employees come in. what we need to do is look at why because we have ten or

12,000 paper ballots and every other time it's all in the machine. this time we have 200,000 because they couldn't get ready that quickly. covid comes in march of 2020. you can't order those machines and get them here if you wanted to. one of the things i think all of usf in this state in particular given the number of voters we have is not assume that we are going to go back in 2022 or 2024 to a very small amount of mail-in ballots. some people have gotten used to that. they like it. it's convenient and we will have a lot more voting over time so we better get more machines to count these votes because the other reason why we have so many

conspiracy theories is the longer it takes the more you wonder what they are up to. and i talk about that in the book it's a natural thing because all the way back to the founding of the country there's the conspiracyou theories about politics throughout the founding. the opinions don't have to be right they just have to be opinions and i always remember what brandon used to say. he was one of the funniest people i ever met and one of the liens he used to use all the time was i made my wife promise that when i die she will bury me in hudson county so i can remain active in politics. i say this in the book.

i'm not saying that irregularities didn't happen on election day. by thehs way they happened in nw jersey a month ago. there's enough to change the results of the election in any anyone estate let alone the five states. we've proven in the book that it's just not possible. so that i think is an important thing to remember. if you think you don't trust the county clerk to count the votes, wait until a federal bureaucrat is counting your vote. conspiracy theories will be tripled and quadrupled.

if anybody has questions we can move.. >> we have to use the microphone because the tv guys are here tonight. >> mye question is if the biden administration continues to have headwind do you think the mainstream media will turn against them? >> not completely against them, no but the mainstream media in the country is slanted towards the left. in fact they are almost playing it up.

it's almost never not 3-1 without the roundtable. most of the time it is 3-1 and that is t even on one of the networks if you go to the news networks, they revel in a leftward slant. i say to folks all the time you should watchal a little bit of both so you realize there are two worlds we are living in rightes now.

there's three newspapers every day to give the conservative side of things. "the new york times" so i know what the enemy is thinking and "the new york post." i want to see how whatever the stories of today are how they cover them differently and you will find the cover them differently and emphasize which

stories. there'sd a big story on wall street and washington, d.c. fox news won't cover the washington story unless it's really big. they won't cover the washington story either they will cover immigration and stories about immigration in the border. i think it's educational to watch all of it. why they think some of the things they think.

i don't think we have any hope of them playing it down the middle. i happen to think one of the biggest failings is the state of inner public school it creates a generation to get their kids into charter schools. why hasn't it taken hold for school choice, vultures because the party they are voting for is entrenchedua and the cycle is perpetuated and never gets better. i can't understand why that population hasn't moved.

folks have gotten into the habit of voting democrat and they just have a hard time breaking that habit unless republicans aggressively campaign there and make the argument.

we got more votes, we won union the city and had a 62% of the votes when i tried to argue gacross the country you've goto go to places and make arguments that you know the group of voters needs to hear. parents care most about their children and want them to get an education. the biggest supporters i have

including thoseer in muslim mosques and places like patterson because they say to me we are tired of seeing the children who sit in our pews every sunday constantly failed by the public school system. now the teachers unions across the country spend an exorbitant t.amount of money. like i hear now in the state touting that we have the best schools in america for some kids he's supposed to be the one who

cares more about the underprivileged. the money they spent was extraordinary. on an upbeat funny note in 2010, the first big fight with the teachers union, they were in one of thebe suv is going someplace. i don't know where but we were on the turnpike and we had gotten through and up to the left was one of those turnpikes and it was a picture of me and

it said chris christie hates children. [laughter] and it was an awful picture of me. our son patrick for those of you here that know our family, he's definitely the straw that serves the drink. the time.years-old at i was hoping they didn't see it. he says dad, your people have to get better pictures of you. [laughter] and i said did you read what the billboard says, those are not my people. he said i don't know, dad, it was a really bad picture. [laughter] i, governor christie. i am compelled to tell a story that goes back to 1985 when

brendan byrne and edd. were here at morristown supporting a democratic candidate for senator. he happened to have a fundraiser and brendan gets up and says you know, i don't understandmo why u have to be running as a democrat because most of the democrats i know from hudson county follow the same pattern. they get elected, indicted and sentenced. i had a similar experience at my old job. [laughter] on another note, i wanted to ask about october 202nd, 2020 at an event you happened to be there which was the sort of garden party for seating the debate between biden and trump and i think we all know what happened subsequent to that garden party

namely that trump tested positive for covid and thereth were all sorts of supporters sitting in those chairs yourself included. how do you feel at that at the time he knew he had covid, how do you feel about the trump mall, a gentleman that you supported for president in terms of his loyalty to his closest associates?? and putting them essentially in peril as a result of the subsequent attest that he had for testing positive? >> i will say a few things about that to kind of gently correct the record a little bit. my understanding is that he tested positive the next day. its doesn't change the thesis of your question except it changes it for what happened the day before. the day before, everybody who was sitting there i don't

believe by the way that event was a super spreader. the people who got covid, three people who were at that party who got covid who were not involved in the debate prep. one of the most father jenkins of notre dame. there were two others. i'm convinced we all got covid in debate prep. there were seven of us including the president and six of us got covid. it's disturbing to me and mary pat to have her 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's a story in the book after i got put in the hospital he was in the hospital as well anduc he called me and this stoy now makes much more sense than it did two days ago. he called me and said how are you doing i said not well. you sound bad. he goes to his normal stuff. 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] he then got to the point of the call. he said so how did you think you got it. i said i don't know, mr. president. i'm pretty confident i got it at the white house but six of the seven got it, who knows who patient zero was.

but i got it at the white house. he then said to me you're not going to blame it on me, or you. i said d why would i blame it on you, i don't know that you're the one that gave it to me. i don't know,, you're sick too. he said so you're not going to tell the press that i gave it to you? i said it 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 beside him got tested every day before we went in. the process was during that time you went to the gate at the white house, you got admitted, someone escorted you to the eisenhower building next door and that is where the medical unit is. did you go to the medical unit.

they swab you. use out there for 15 minutes. if you are negative you are authorized to go to the west wing. so i was always a little bit suspicious as to whether one of us got a false positive, false-negative rather or whether itkn was him because he's the oy one we didn't know whether he was getting tested every day or not. we wouldn't know. for me, mary pat, especially how bad my experience with covid was in the intensive care unit for seven days and a couple of moments feeling like it was going to go the wrong way, finding that out a couple of days ago if in fact what meadows says is true -- because he tries to hedge it in the book a little bit that he got a negative test after that and so they weren't sure.

but at a minimum, what we were owed. everybody in that room, me, kelly and conway, stephen miller and the other. ile said stephen, the other miller, jason miller. presumably he is owed nothing but the rest of us we are all owed to be told that because i will tell you this we all would have worn masks. we didn't because we said we are getting tested every day and that's why i wasn't wearing a maskmy at that event because evy person sitting at h the event al had been tested before they were allowed to come in and all had tested negative. but what i said afterwards, whatever the president did he's got to live with his own conscience and i'm not going to be able to impose guilt on him.

if he was in fact positive but what i will tell you is that fos me i said this 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 zonee because all of us had been tested and i was wrong. now i probablyng know why i was wrong. i didn'tn know then but regardless i should have worn the mask and it would have been an extra layer of safety for me. as you might imagine what mary pat and i when we saw that pop up on our phones earlier this week earlier in the morning, we had an interesting reaction. >> thank you. asn you mentioned, you agree.

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 ballot they are using the system and somehow we definitely have to be concerned about and the same happened. i know certain areas are highly controlled. they use machines and do all the things to influence the mail-in votes and there's a lot of fraud going on and also using the machine to teach kids and when they graduated they become 90% democratic. if it is the system, a corruption if we say it doesn't exist as much that we need to

worry about -- i don't disagree with most of what you just said except they didn't steal the presidential election. it's just hard. seriously, think about this for a second. did you think joe biden masterminded a nationwide conspiracy to steal the votes? joe biden couldn't mastermind a onele car funeral let alone that type of operation and have it to be unfound. now, yes or liberals using the educational system in a way to

try to indoctrinate our children into a certain thought process? absolutely. that is a different fight and that's a fight we should have. i support the georgia election law because i will tell you a quick story this whole idea of not having to show an id when you go to vote that somehow being asked to show an id is discriminatory. i went to new york city eight or nine weeks ago and walk into an office building to go to a meeting. i walk up and they say i'm such a big fan can i come around and take a picture, sure.

goes back in, can i see your id? [laughter] i looked at him and i said your convinced enough that i am me thatau you took a picture with e and how did me give you an autographed asked for an id and he said sorry, it's the rule. i handed it to him. if i have to do that to enter 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'm a bad example because i walk in here and if they don't know me it's a problem but i think everybody should have to show an id. one of the things i did when i was governor which is why you should be less concerned about the voter role in this state, i

mandated for counties to update. we knocked a lot of dead people off the voter role during my eight years as governor. now, it's got to be a constant process because people die all the time and movels all the time but the voter role in new jersey is in much better shape than before. i think they are going to continue to be a factor and i don't want republicans complaining about it anymore. it's notot that hard. they send out the ballot, then a piece of mail saying you got your ballot here's how you return it and they call four or five times and say did you get yourlo ballot yet? then they text you then they

e-mail you. it's not a turnout anymore. they drag those votes out of the house. there's no reason, all the rest. it makes it a little bit harder with the door-to-door portion of it. it's a little harder. i've done both and the end of it is much harder so we will always be at a disadvantage because they tend to be more suburban and rural areas. butt i was at an event a week before the election this year for now senator brown a fundraising event and a woman raised her hand and asked a questionto about 101.5 what aree going to do to combat it and i looked at her and said it's

going to be because we don't know how to do the mail-in ballots. and it turned out six days later that i was exactly right. on the machine jack was elected governor. you count the mail-in votes and he loses by 75,000. the bigger point, your point is we've got 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 win thewa next one ever. voters don't want to hea' about that. that's not why they vote for you.

the last story i will tell you we've rebuilt the boardwalk so you know five months i'm down there taking a picture, walking down the boardwalk a guy comes up to me and says you're running for reelection. why should i vote for you? look at this boardwalk. that's why i voted for you last time. what do i get for voting for you next time. voters in maine think about tomorrow, not yesterday and that's good. it shows we are a hopeful country. we think tomorrow can be better than yesterday. we don't want to dwell. our party has to start doing that. stop the greedy politics and the moaning and complaining. fight them in the place you can fight, fight for the voter id and to make sure they are cleaning up the voter role. take those out of play and then

our ideas versus their ideas. in an election we picked up six seats in the assembly and a seat in the senate and a lot of local seats except for the top of the ticket election day looks very good forte republicans across te state and sets a very clear message to the legislative democrats who are going to be much more reluctant to do what he wants us to do because they are all back up in 2023 with a new map. we've got a map right now. this when i got elected in 2013 i had 60% of the votes statewide. we didn't pick up one seat in the legislature. if that isn't a gerrymandered

map, i don't know whatt it is. 60% of the vote with one seat underneath. hopefully they are negotiating and we will get a better map. i always like to say one last question. >> we will see. i might take to just to show people -- [laughter] >> every once in w a while -- >> in two short years. >> there's two guys there. i will make them short answers. >> i will make it a straightforward question. nice to see you governor. looking forward like we've been citalking about tonight and especially the midterms next year and even 24, how do you think the republican party unites itself nationally where

you still have a section of the party that likes to see a new face in 24 and even sooner and another section but still very much likeses president trump. is this a good model for everywhere, does it very? what are your thoughts on that? >> first, never forget the other sidede unites us like we could never unite ourselves and by the way same with the democrats. donald i trump -- the democrats have been united in my lifetime so remember part of the process is zero my god what are they doing we have to stop them and republicans are willing t to put down something different in order to stop that. the second piece is that we've got to start talking about the things the voters care about. elections aren't about what the

candidates think is important. it's what the voters think. part of what we need to do is get ourselves back into that mode of thinking and we haven't been. we've been yelling and complaining and screaming about things that most of the voters don't care about. they send a message not once but twice in 18 and 20, so we need to listen. >> i will try to make it fairly quick. needless to say, having been a public figure, i think everyone was aware of president trump's foibles and personality quirks tand whatnot. one thing that i think has made people loyal to him as he came oin and said i will do certain things and by and large he did them. and i would say as someone who's

generally voted republican, i've often been disappointed by my party in terms of failure to keep promises made during the campaign so too often we are talked to we will do this and then nothing is done except for the fact that if you look at trump, he fixed a skating rink in new york after six years of nonsense. he built a golf club on a dump in a short period of time. he started building a wall when no wall was ever built. he moved the embassy in israel to the capital of israel where it had been said that this will happen, this will happen so we are looking if somebody is going to be a more acceptable alternative than the foibles and personality problems, then we

don't d want somebody who's stil going to do what he said. i don't know why our party has often disappointed us. >> if you talk to democrats they will say the same thing and there will be a bunch of democrats who will say it as well so i don't think it's unique to our party but what i will say is look, i agreed with of the things president trump trieder to do. there were some things where we differed but not usually in a significant way. here's where i part company with him. you s can't stand up behind the seal of the president of the united states in the east room of the white house at 2:30 a.m. on election night and tell the american people thought it was s stolen and not present any evidence. the words of the president of the united states matter more than a new york real estate mogul.at he continued to talk like he was

a real estate developer when he was the president of the united states and the american people want to believe what the president tells them. 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 would we have thought at that moment? that something of an enormous gravity to the american people, like an t election. the idea that someone would say that he was killed but he wasn't would have been something we would never accept.t saying an election was stolente and not presenting evidence to back that up here we are 13 months later and 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 saturday after the election you don't either present the evidence that was stolen now or you are going to diminish your legacy in a way that will damage you personally and the party for a long time. so i agree there are many things he said he would do that he got done. you can say that about anybody that gets elected but election night to me was a line that made it possible for me to say that's okay. it's not and we all get into this business of knowing that we could win or lose and sometimes you think it isn't fair. i've lost elections i thought were not fair.

you stand up and say i think that was fair. the votes have been counted, people have spoken and i will live to fight another day. that's where i think the divide is now and that is something that wasn't necessary to do. and not welcoming the bidens to the white house on inaugural morning, not going to the inauguration -- if you think hilary clinton wanted to be sitting there january 2017 at donaldld trump's inaugural, if u think al gore wanted to be sitting there 2001 of george w. bush's inaugural, you know, george bush 41 sitting there at bill clinton's inaugural. i have confidence they would have rather had elective root canal, butgo they went and not

only did they go but they welcomed the victor to the white house and said this is the way we do it in this country. they made a peaceful transfer of power where they congratulate the victory and leave with grace and dignity. heed didn't do any of that. it diminished him and our country in the process. you can stillgo say i don't thik it'sus fair. al gore went all the way to the u.s. supreme court but when the supreme court ruled, he didn't say i'm not listening or moving out. i'm staying i'm still the vice president. he conceded, he went out and welcomed bush to the observatory. it showed the country the way we operate and that's the way we've operated the last 250 years, and

i think that's one of the present and should have done muchks differently. >> my wife and i drove up from the shore to be here and i'm glad we did. we would love to see was the candidate 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 work for a company based in the midwest and to spend a lot of time out there. there's a lot of good people out there but when it comes to new yorkers or anybody from the northeast we don't reallyow get them. we talk too fast, we don't give the chance to hear what is said to them and took a chance on trump and they feel they got burned. how would somebody like you overcome what's become a bias against the northeast? >> i would say other places they

didn't. i can tell you when i was in iowa in 2015 there's definitely you've got to come up hill a little bit when you have a vowel at the end of your name. it's a little tough. [laughter] but i think that for any of us, our own authenticity has to be what we rely upon. there are plenty of people who don't like me. that's okay. it's their right. but even the people who don't like me, most of them don't call me a phony. they've gotten to know you but don't like me. [laughter] that's fine. that's their call but we can't

back away from authenticity and quitee frankly one of the reasos he got elected is because people said look he may not to say everything the way i would like to say it but i think that he means it. that's who he is and as a result of some people were willing to take a chance on him based upon that authenticity so i a still think the most important thing in a candidate's authenticity and you can tell when they are not. you look at certain candidates atlike they are sitting there trying to think what the answer should be and figure out what it is you want to hear. the american people have proven themselves to be smarter than that. the only way to overcome, the

northeastern bias against republicans there's no doubt that exists. a talking about a weird accent, they think we have one. [laughter] i think certain candidates overcome that with their approaching personalities and authenticity. i know i said only three -- [inaudible] >> i'm not telling her to sit down. no chance. if i've got to get in trouble with this woman and not with about one i'm okay with that. >> i do admire you and am happy to be here tonight. i would say i'm pretty much an independent kind of person and i did vote for biden. what people need to understand is biden was a placeholder. he was a viable candidate to

trump and that was it it wasn't because people were so in love with biden and that's part of struggling now because he's going way over to the left and everybody's like what the hell are you doing. that's how a lot of us are feeling. >> i'm glad to say it because i feel like even the majority of the voters are feeling that way. but my question to you is at this point i think you represent a minority bit of someone standing up i'm wondering if donald trump and his minions so to speak start goingo? after yo, what are you going to do and how are you going to react because i would much rather see you on the ballot. >> you all have watched me for a long time. even longer than new jersey.

the president attacked me a week or soal ago and talked about my approval rating. look, my approval rating was bad enough when i left he made it worse, he lied about it and made it worse. i thought why don't you just tell the truth. it was really bad when i left. you could have used the real number and it would have been terrible. my response to him was well, i don't know. when i ran for reelection i got a 60% of the vote. when you ran, you lost to joe biden. [laughter] he's never gotten into a fight with me i believe because he knows i know how to fight back. ..

and buno we went for lunch with the president on valentine's day of 2017 when he been in office for three weeks and he wasn't exactly t my idea of valentine's day. and he said look around. can you believe i'm here and he was showing me the oval office and is like well yeah sure you won and they sat down to talk about it at lunch and i said remember something. you didn't't win this election.

mr. president it doesn't matter because your hand was on the buy one january 20 then you are sleeping upstairs and sleeping in this office doesn't matter that the next four years it's about you because you'll be the one being judged and the same thing happened to me. i unfortunately lost and i'm not a big enough ego to think that everybody went, whoever laid wanted was chris christie. they said oh my i don't want jon corzine anymore and i looked like a reasonable alternative that someone may have party rejected so understand what you mean and that's by the way how trump got elected. hilary clinton 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 with donald trump. zoe one. mary pappas say at when i told them that he got so mad. i won in a landslide. she didn't lose, i beatt her. look you can think that the just not true and you shouldn't be upset about it. i felt the same way. i know that i lost the what i did every day i went to my campaign manager the day after the election in 2009 and we were at 48% of the vote in a three-way race that could miss it every day from here on out

your job is to figure out how we buildli that coalition and whati need to do to convince as many of the 51.5% of people who didn't vote for me to vote for me next time. if donald trump at them that he'd still be in the white house. that's what he did. and that happens. in a close election you don't bring the pressure together you wind up losing. that's what's happening to joe biden right now. joe biden is a uniter and can bring the country together and return it to normalcy and he goes to the base of his party the exact same mistake that trump made and doesn't try to bring more people in. remember in 2013 when i got

reelected they had 51% of filipino voters in 29% of the african-american vote in a few years earlier i had gotten 11% of the african-american vote in 33% of the latino vote. that didn't happen by a miracle. we work every every day to react to those folks to ask them why and i tried to deal with the issues they were concerned about. independents abandoned biden because he is abandoned members for their standing in the middle of the country saying we are going to help joe biden now. elizabeth warren and bernie sanders the democratic party with elizabeth warren and bernie sanders and kamala harris because they were too liberal.

they nominated a 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 getting too old. and i'm seeing too much but it's pretty simple on how to try to govern and when in this country and winning is the hardest part. once you get there whether it's power the governorship or the power of the presidency you have the ability to be able to bring people together if you decide to do it. i'm disappointed that trump didn't and i'm disappointed that biden didn't and i think the mayor can people in 2020 the hive to do it again w in 2024 tt we want someone who's going to

bring the country together. we are tired of being divided and tired of not being able to go to cocktail parties and have a conversation about politics. we are tired of people yelling at us because we have a sticker on her car and we are tired of people giving us a hard time because of what we believe. and when i grew up in politics that was the way it was and i think we can bring it back. this book is an effort to start with my own party. >> why iran is an independent? >> all right. they make you could probably went because let the sites go to the site. the middle candidate is going to win. >> what you need to do as a republican to start with your own party and start talking to them and look either i'll convince people or i want but that's what this business is all about.

the press would say to me while the polls say this and i'd say to them while my job is to change polls and not to talk about them. if you are persuasive leader your job is to change the polls so i hope that is what this book will do. we started a conversation rupert murdoch gave a speech three days later at news corp. meeting where he said donald trump is wrong. the election wasn't stolen and we had to stop talking about it. we will fight for the future and where to stop worrying about t e past. if trump doesn't stop talking aboutf he can't be a part of the future. they had a "fox news" was saying that and we would start to get someplace.th that's why did the book and that's why we started the conversation i'm glad people asl questions because of a great place for us to end. i want to say one thing besides thanks to 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 we have been here when we were brand-new residents with no children and nobody knew who we were. been a governor that had suvs idling outside of bever place t prayers all around town with wires in their ears. at least for that time we lived in the safest town in jersey guarantee you that no problem there. you lifted the safest place but for all those ups and downs there were times were difficult and and when you're in public life and you come home you want to not have to worry about going

out at all. i can tell y you that when thins were great everybody here was great but when things weren't great everybody here was great too. even when they disagreed with me they did it in a way that was respectful of the fact that we are one of you and so we thank you for that. you have provided us with the community to raise all four of our children in a way that we wanted to and when they were in theit public spotlight you madet better not worse. you didn't make them feel different and that on the soccer field or the football field you guys made them feel like they were normal kids and that made our lives a lot easier so thank for coming tonight and thank you. [applause]

>> thank you governor and thank you mary pat another beautiful evening.

tonight is my pleasure to welcome investor in nikki haley back to the nixon library in orange cancer. investors the author