GOP Candidate Chris Christie on Trump, Election, Fed, Ukraine, China

you've gone out of your way to make it clear that you're the guy who's going to go after Donald Trump you've been punching him in the nose rhetorically for several weeks here you're saying things that other candidates simply will not say about the front runner but how about you how do you solidify your brand as something more than just anti-trump well it isn't it's about two things it's first about the truth the truth matters and Republican primary voters to serve the truth they haven't gotten it from Joe Biden as president and they haven't gotten it from Donald Trump either and so part of it is just about telling the truth so you'll see today whatever's issues you ask me about I'm going to just hit it right between the eyes and let you know what I think secondly it's about delivering on issues that our voters care about so the fact is that they care deeply about Obamacare and Donald Trump promised him he'd repeal and replace it he had a republican Congress he didn't do it they care deeply about immigration he said he was going to build a big beautiful wall you remember on the whole border of Mexico well he built 47 miles of wall in four years 47 miles at that rate guys he would need 110 years as president to be able to finish the wall he didn't get it done he said he's going to balance the budget as you all know here at Bloomberg he had six trillion dollars to the national debt in four years so what we want to be is the person who delivers on that and I will tell you this the last time we were in a situation like this in our country was in the late 70s High inflation energy crisis disrespect around the world Jimmy Carter was the president as opposed to Joe Biden Biden said kardash's favorite President and what did we do as Republicans we nominated and then elected a conservative Governor from a blue State who knew how to get things done that was Ronald Reagan I'm the conservative Governor from the blue State now who knows how to get things done that's the brand that's what we're going to be talking about in this campaign about getting results for the American people and tell them the truth the issue of course at the moment is that the former president is leading in all these polls but he has all of these indictments surrounding him you've been on both sides of federal investigation you of course were prosecutor you went after corruption you were also not charged but you were under the investigation for bridge gate out of all of these criminal defamation what do you think is the most damaging to Trump well so certainly so far the worst is the the classified document situation not only because he had our nation's secrets hanging out at maravaco and at the Bedminster Golf Club think about the risk that that puts our men and women in uniform and our Intelligence Officers at as they try to do these things difficult things around the world defending and advocating for America and he just has these secrets laying out there for anybody to see and then he lied about it and obstructed the investigation and instructed his lawyers to lie and lied to his own lawyers those are some pretty bad facts that put a lot of loyal patriotic Americans at risk now we'll see what's going to happen with the January 6th charges that may come based upon the the target letter that he received yesterday and what happens in Atlanta and whether he gets charged there as well so I don't mind that the poll numbers are where they are right now you always would rather be in front than behind but remember at this time eight years ago Jeb Bush was ahead of Donald Trump by double digits so we know how that ended up I want to ask you about the Republican rhetoric here in Washington about what could be another indictment in certainly those that have already been dropped on Donald Trump speaker McCarthy the Speaker of the House himself yesterday said this is a reaction by the Biden Administration to Donald Trump's polling surge in their effort to weaponize the doj against him as a political rival do you agree with that I don't look first off because I don't even know what the charges are yet right and neither does Kevin and so I would counsel Kevin that he should wait to see the indictment first before he jumps to any judgments now it could be that Kevin turns out to be right maybe these charges are are completely bogus and political like the ones that Manhattan were in my opinion that were brought by Alvin Bragg I think that was a political indictment and I don't think you know when you're the Manhattan D.A and I spent a good amount of time in Manhattan I don't think charging somebody on a seven-year-old payment to a porn star is making Manhattan any safer and believe me Manhattan needs to be made safer Republicans also say that mayor Garland should be impeached do you agree with them on that well I certainly don't know at this point whether he's told the truth or not regarding the hunter Biden case I think that's where he's there's some problems there with the U.S attorney Weiss and Delaware and attorney general Garland let's see who's telling the truth um if he did not tell the truth to the Congress the attorney general or the U.S attorney then either one of them if they had no I told the truth should be removed all right so we're going to embark on something new here we're going to talk issues with you we'd like to get into some policy I may need a timeout before we well if you need a minute we can always let's start with the economy that's important to our audience here and we'd like to get to a couple of areas with you here uh specific to inflation do you think the FED should stop hiking rates now should wait for the lag effect to see what this unprecedented uh set of rate hikes is doing to our economy or do you just keep bashing this thing until it's down to two percent well look I think that they probably should take a bit of a breather up to see what the lag effect is as you said because what we're not seeing is we're not seeing inflation staying we're seeing it drop and so I think that the FED may have done its work already and believe me as you know they can ratchet it back up pretty quickly they have monthly meetings and they can do that and then call special meeting if they think there's some emergent situation they need to deal with so I think with the FED it might be a good time to take a breath because what we don't want to do they want to have a soft Landing I think everybody in America would like to have a soft landing on this and not have a recession if we can avoid it I was governor during the 0809 10 recession and I remember how brutal that was for our everyday citizens we don't want to go through that again if we can avoid it Fed chair Jay Powell was appointed by Trump and then reappointed by Biden would you consider keeping him on I certainly would consider it I don't have anything that I think Jay has done horribly wrong I think that he probably should have started tightening sooner than he did um I think he waited too long on that but look the fed's an independent agency um I would like to keep them independent I don't think I'm certainly not an economist and I don't think I should be making every one of those either he's a lawyer like he's a lawyer but he has a lot of experience in this area a lot more than I do and and I so look I would consider everybody who's on board at the moment um you know and you have to evaluate them each one of them one at a time and he's in the midst of a uh of a term as a term also so you know I'd want to be careful about that but I think in the end everyone's going to be judged in my Administration based on their performance they perform well they do good things for our economy I quite frankly don't care where they came from I just want to have good competent people who actually get something done as opposed to what we've seen the last number of years when government can it out of its own way how about the inflation reduction act if you become the nominee this is going to be one of the things that Joe Biden is trumping as a major accomplishment knowing that it'll result in the Hudson tunnels in in your state we've been hearing Republicans in its comical the president likes to point this out who voted against the IRA or in some cases the uh the infrastructure law and Champion the money when it comes home well I would divide the two look I think the tunnel money is coming from the infrastructure law and I would have been supportive of that and we excuse me from the inflation reduction does it come from a place to work and that just means that they really wanted to come from to justify the inflation reduction act because there's plenty of money it's a trillion dollar program and I think they're giving six or seven billion for the tunnels um and which they should do because that's not just important for New York and New Jersey it's from Boston to Washington but the inflation reduction Act was a mistake and don't take my word for it listen to Larry Summers whose treasury secretary back under Bill Clinton and he is not a conservative by any stretch but we had already spent too much money during covet money that we had to spend to keep the economy going but he said in his op-ed in the New York Times if you do the inflation reduction act we will have runaway inflation and it's exactly what we had and people are still suffering from that so you don't like inflation reduction act but you like the 6 billion for the Hudson The Six Million from the Hudson tunnel should come from the infrastructure act that is purely a political Choice Emory that's all it is because you have a trillion dollars for infrastructure you couldn't get plenty of money from Governor you thought it would cost too much money no well what we did when I was governor was got rid of the old plan which was called The Arc tunnel The Arc tunnel was not going to Penn Station in New York they were going to build a new billion dollar terminal underneath Macy's the people if you've ever been in Manhattan and done this walk the walk from Macy's to to the Penn Station is no fun in Winter and In The Heat Of Summer and by the way New Jersey was gonna have to pay for any cost overruns New York didn't have to pay anything and the FEDS didn't have to pay anything I have to tell you the truth I remember you campaigned on that for president as well you want it to be Equitable absolutely it's got to be everyone's gotta and what's happening now with the tunnel 50 coming from the feds 25 from New Jersey 25 from New York that's the way it should be the people who benefit from it should all have a stake in paying for it that's why I canceled that tunnel and by the way we did get Gateway done planned and ready to go all I needed to do was be funded on the federal side it was already funded by New Jersey and New York and that got done and I give you know President Biden credit for that it was a good move and Senator Schumer deserves credit as well but we deserve credit for having come up with a new plan they told us you couldn't go to Penn Station we came up with a plan that did so now people get a one-seat ride from New Jersey right into New York that's what they need well so it sounds like then you would have voted for the infrastructure I would have Bill what what then would you say to lawmakers here in Washington Republicans who voted against the bill but are actually running ads and raising money on the fact that they're quote unquote bringing the bacon home oh welcome to politics in Washington DC yeah sure I mean look that's why I'm saying I'll tell the truth about says I would have voted for the infrastructure bill because this country needed an infrastructure Bill to upgrade our infrastructure across the entire country our roads and bridges our tunnels our airports our our infrastructure for Wi-Fi and all the things that you need to have internet access all throughout this country um we needed to do that and and there are times when government has to do those things I think the infrastructure plan was look there are things I would have done a little differently but presented with that bill I would have voted for it and I said so at the time what about the Trump error tax cuts many of them still are living through the Biden Administration but one thing Trump did do that is hurting some local New Jersey folks is a cap on salt do you think that cap is appropriate I do and I said that as Governor I don't think that the rest of the country should be paying for the excessive taxes that we had in New Jersey and New York and Illinois and California and because it could be deducted you didn't feel the pain directly and so uh you know I think putting it at the cap where it is I'm might have made the cap a little bit more generous but no I campaigned for president saying that we should that we should get rid of that deduction because what it does is it encourages people to increase property taxes increase local and state taxes and have much less of an impact on their people but everybody else in the country is paying for it we're going to be hearing from a lot of terminal users on that answer I can guarantee you right now how about did you weigh in on the tax cuts would you allow the the Trump era tax cuts 2017 to stay in place yes you would with that said would you keep the Trump era tariffs on China in place because this Administration seems to think it's good business we need to have a totally new approach to what we do with China and I think the tariffs might be a part of it but the fact is that what we have to do is get a lot tougher on China in general and we haven't done so from a military perspective in terms of our own preparedness we haven't done so in the support of our allies we need to be even more strong in supporting Ukraine that that's a that's a proxy war with China China is funding the Russian army they are coordinating with the Iranians to provide sophisticated weapons to the Russians they otherwise wouldn't have China is watching us vis-a-vis Taiwan they want to seek can we hang in there and stick with it and stick by an ally or will we cut and run we need to be much tougher on that so yeah yes you would keep the tariffs or no because besides I'd say it's on the table Administration is also doing export controls there's going to be an executive order an outbound investment the business Community some of them have been a little bit irked by a lot of this but at the same time they really double down I'd say the tariffs are on the table um depending on what the Chinese are willing to do for us I think we need to start a new era of conversation with them negotiating from a place of strength so I wouldn't commit one way or the other at this point on the tariffs because then I'm giving away one of the cards I can play with President G when I'm sitting across from him the first time we meet so you like that leverage we're just trying to find Sunlight between you and the Biden administration's policy on China you say you'd be tougher where does that place you on the matter of Taiwan you mentioned that when we go to taiwan's defense militarily if invaded by mainland China I think we have to I think we do I I think Taiwan is in Americans America's vital interests and and the fact is that you do everything you can to avoid that situation um as very best you can but in the end when you look at certain things and you talk about business um you look at the percentage of of semiconductors that are produced in Taiwan America could not do the business we do without Taiwan as a partner now you know you do everything you can as president to avoid that and the way to avoid it is what I've talked about before is standing up and being strong um showing the Chinese that the juice isn't worth the squeeze it's going to invade Taiwan and if the status quo as it exists now is good for us and it's good and it's good for them vis-a-vis Taiwan so it sounds like though you say you're going to go defend you would move away from strategic ambiguity no no no no that now that's different that's different question the question of whether you know you have a one China policy or not um is very different from if China decides to aggressively go in and invade and try to take over Taiwan that becomes different because that means they're a Bad Thing strategic ambiguity not us and Marie in fact we could just spend and on one more there's been a lot of difference of opinions amongst you and other candidates regarding Ukraine from a territorial dispute to Putin full on Invasion Mike Pence seems to be the most hawkish he actually went to Kiev is that something you would consider doing look I think it's very important that whoever the Republican nominee is shows that we are going to stand with our allies around the world the thing that's made America different stronger better than any other power that we've seen in the last 500 years is that we create these relationships around the world and we stand with our allies the ukrainians are Freedom loving folks who got invaded violently and without any provocation and we can't allow that stuff to happen around the world and by the way they're not asking for American troops they're just asking for the ability to defend themselves those are the kind of allies we want and we should be able to provide them with the military hardware they need to be able to fight off an awful Russian invasion Putin is an authoritarian dictator and he's coming in there and he's going to take as much as we'll let him take he needs to know that ourselves and our NATO allies will stand up behind Ukraine even though they're not a member of NATO we'll stand with them and Supply them with what they need would you be prepared to refill our own Munitions stockpiles that have been drawn down to support Ukraine you have to you have to no one's having that conversation so you can't leave you can't leave the United States vulnerable um to attack because of what we're doing this is the investment we're making in making sure that we don't send American troops to fight another War anytime anywhere it's about being prepared to fight so you don't have to

Channel: Bloomberg Television

Views: 97,902

Keywords: Bloomberg

Id: JruSOXZYXVs

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023