Chris Christie

speaker

239 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 22 Mar

Chris Christie’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.

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The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart · The Cons & Cons of Trump with Gov. Chris Christie · 30 Jan 2025 podcast

So what I did was I said, look, I am forcing us to go out and recruit candidates who are African-American, Latino, Asian, women, and bring them to me. And if they're not good, I'm not going to hire them. But I'm convinced we're not seeing him.

And the aha moment for me on that concept and why it was the right way to go was there was a young guy that I hired very early on, African-American, University of Michigan, University of Penn Law School, clerk for Alan Page, the former Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle. in the Supreme Court of Minnesota. Absolutely. Purple people leader. And he's from New Jersey. Grew up in Maplewood.

And I said to him, why did you ever apply here before? And he said, because I knew people like me wouldn't get hired. And, you know, we then went about this process of hiring, you know, a large number of African-American, Latino, and Asian prosecutors. But I would tell you that every one of them checked both boxes.

They checked the box of they now look more like the community we represent than we did before. And these are really good lawyers.

And I don't think, John, that that's the way it's been implemented across the board in government. And I think people see examples of that and it makes them paint the entire effort with the same brush.

And my argument to you is I don't think it makes it any better to just rig it in a different direction. And I think that's what people perceive was going on with DEI. It's not rigging it in a different direction. It's unrigging it.

governor. I think there have been a number of areas where there are people who hire certain folks just for their diversity. And I've seen it happen here in New Jersey, you know, in the government since I left, where people say, I am going to make sure that I have one of every, it's almost like a half a Noah's Ark.

Okay, I'm going to have one of these and one of these and one of these and one of these.

No, no. What I did was get them in to interview them. And if it turned out, if it turned out, John, that they were also really good lawyers, they got hired. I'm talking about something different.

I'm talking about predetermining the outcome in the way that you just talked about, and I believe that legacy admissions predetermine the outcome, that there have been some in charge of government across this country who have predetermined outcomes and said, I am going to have this many African Americans, this many Latinos, this many Asians, this many lesbians, this many gay men.

And I think that when people see that, they say to themselves, that's not right either. Not that the other way was completely right, but now you're really screwing it up. They're both wrong. And I didn't get any objection when I did what I did in New Jersey.

It wasn't like a bunch of people started picketing saying when they started to see African-American, Latino, and Asian, and women prosecutors in the federal courthouse that they started saying, What the hell is Christie doing over there? He's turning a place into this.

I would say that airlines would not hire pilots given the importance of the safety of what they do if they didn't think they were competent.

I did. However, I will also tell you that I think that a lot of people don't view certain government positions nearly as critical. And so they feel like I can do this. And I think the public senses that. And that's the problem, John.

I think that it's being blamed on political actors on the other side of this, John, who who are using it for their own political purposes. Let's be honest. There are people who, on the Democratic side of this, who will do it to try to make themselves look more caring to the minority community, more in touch with the minority community. And I think that their motivations are craven in that regard.

Not everybody, but I think a lot of them.

No, I think Donald Trump thought it was a cool slogan that would respond to what people were feeling both when he ran in 2016 and when he ran in 2024, which was they were at that moment dissatisfied with the status quo. So if you can tie into that politically, rhetorically and say, I'm going to make America great again. It does two things. It tells people, I agree with you, it's not great now.

And two, I'm the guy who can make it great like you remember it. And many Americans are going to have different feelings about when it was great and what made it great. The classic marketing tool of Donald Trump on this was, it can mean whatever you want it to mean, John. Mm-hmm. And so people think Donald Trump has a vision.

The fact that you would assume that Donald Trump knows any American history is startling to me, John, because he doesn't. I honestly don't think you're giving him enough credit. I think... No, you're wrong. Okay. I've known him a lot longer and a lot closer than you have. No, I don't know him at all. And John, I am telling you, he doesn't know.

I could give a lot of examples of how he messes up American history. All right, all right. We'll talk about him for a second. He took me to the Lincoln bedroom one time and he pointed to the desk in the Lincoln bedroom and he said, that's where Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address. Now, anybody...

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