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Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, talked by Zoom on Wednesday afternoon with Chris Christie, who was the Republican governor of New Jersey when Hurricane Sandy hit that state in 2012, about the differences between the political climate then and the one surrounding the devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Their conversation has been condensed and edited.
Frank Bruni: I’m here in North Carolina, but far from the devastation. You’ve been on my mind because I keep thinking back to Hurricane Sandy and to the teamwork and mutual respect that you and President Barack Obama demonstrated at the time. Helene, now Milton — this has been politicized in a way that I don’t recall from Sandy. And a lot of misinformation has been pushed by Donald Trump. What do you make of that and also — because you know this from experience — how much does that actually hurt the relief and rescue efforts?
Former Gov. Chris Christie: Well, unfortunately, I think it’s a natural extension of the reaction politically that I got within my own party from working with President Obama. I will tell you, Frank, that not only when I ran in 2016, but when I ran in 2024, I could not get by a week without hearing about, “Oh, you hugged Obama.” And now it’s 12 years later.
So there’s no question that inside my party in particular, there is no longer the water’s edge. Everything is politicized. And when you add to it not only Trump’s willingness but seeming inability to avoid lying about everything — the combination of the two are toxic to the political environment generally, but they are really toxic to the human environment in a disaster. Because people are so disoriented by what’s happened to them. They’ve lost their home. Some of them have lost loved ones. They’ve lost their business. They have no place to stay. They’re living in, sometimes, shelters, temporary housing. And all you want to try to find out during that time is the truth about: When am I going to be able to get back to a normal life?
Bruni: Given all our history with Trump, this is going to seem like a naïve and ridiculous question, but how can that not make an impression on him? How can that not factor into his thinking and give him pause when we’re talking, as you just said, about people’s lives and most desperate needs?
Christie: Because no one’s life is more important to him than his. It’s really that simple. I mean, it’s not that he doesn’t get it. He does get it, but he makes a value judgment that in the grand context of things, his life and his circumstance are the most important thing in the world.
And if you ask him to rationalize that, he’ll say: “Well, if I don’t win, their circumstances will even be worse. So that’s why they should care about how this is impacting me or why it’s OK for me to lie if it means that ultimately, it will wind up with less people voting for Kamala Harris, because she’d be an awful president, and they’d be damaged by that.” That’s the way he thinks about it. Having been exposed to it now for 22 years, I recognize it almost reflexively.
Bruni: Do we need a word stronger, bigger, more operatic than narcissism to describe this? I feel like narcissism is a soft sell of it.
Christie: Yes, but it almost doesn’t matter what word you could come up with. Because everybody’s numb to him and his conduct. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore to anyone because they say, well, that’s Trump.
Bruni: The lies from the right — from the far right in particular — about the relief and rescue efforts here in North Carolina are so pervasive that we now have Republicans stepping out to correct people in their own party. I’ve got to read something to you that I think captures just how crazy things have become. It’s from the website of Representative Chuck Edwards, a Republican member of Congress from North Carolina who represents a huge swath of the hardest-hit areas. You’ll hear him refer to Chimney Rock, which is a well-known village here.
He says to his constituents that while “the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Helene has had its shortfalls, I’m here to dispel the outrageous rumors that have been circulated online. Hurricane Helene was NOT geo-engineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in Chimney Rock.” He later adds, “Local officials have confirmed the government is NOT seizing Chimney Rock.”
How the hell did we get here?
Christie: We go all the way back to Sandy. People focus on the really productive relationship that I had with Obama, but I had a very difficult time getting Republicans in Congress to approve aid. Republicans were talking about how money was going to be used to renovate the Smithsonian and all these different things rather than being used to help victims of Sandy, which turned out to be, obviously, not true.
I saw Thom Tillis (one of North Carolina’s two Republican senators) also said some really smart stuff about what was really going on on the ground in North Carolina now as opposed to what was being put out there by Trump and JD Vance and others. So it’s good to see that unlike with some of Trump’s other lies, there are Republicans other than me and Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who are willing to say, “No, no, no, that’s not right.” This is even getting some Republicans who are willing to put up with a lot of stuff from Trump to say, “No, we’re not going to stand for this.”
Bruni: If you’re one of those Republicans and you’re correctly stepping out and saying, essentially, “What you’re hearing from Trump is wrong — don’t believe it,” and you then turn around and vote for Trump or tell people to, is that a complete abdication of responsibility and act of hypocrisy?
Christie: I believe it is. And when the people who want to lead the country, in addition to leading your party, do those things, where is the courage to do the right thing going to come from for the member of the House, or the county commissioner, or the local legislator? It is endemic right now within our party. And it is an abdication of responsibility. And it is rank hypocrisy. And there’s no other way to describe it.
Now, they’ll rationalize it their own way and talk about the things they don’t like about Vice President Kamala Harris. And there’s things about her positions and things that she stood for previously in her career that I don’t agree with, either. But that’s not the point. You have to conduct yourself in a way that’s honest and forthright. This is like a child who does something wrong and says, “Yeah, well, two other kids did it.” We would never put up with that from our children. Frank, I think rank hypocrisy and abdication of responsibility — you’re probably being kind.
Bruni: Yeah, that’s my nature. That’s my brand. I’m kind.
Christie: Me, too.
Bruni: Listening to you just now, I was thinking that Trump is a kind of one-man antonym to every single value we try to inculcate in children.
Christie: I used to use the children analogy all the time — that as parents, we would never put up with this. And, by the way, neither did his parents. They sent him off to military school.
Bruni: A lot of good that did.
Christie: Obviously, it wasn’t very effective. But in the end, he is a selfish child. And he doesn’t care that these people in North Carolina are suffering the way they are, if caring costs him one bit of perceived political advantage.
When you look back 12 years ago, the moment was just as politically charged as this one is now in terms of the competition about the election. The Obama and Romney race at that point was seen as very close and very competitive. It wasn’t, as this is, 27 days out from the election. It was six when Barack Obama landed in Atlantic City, N.J.
And my instruction at the time to everybody who worked for me was: I don’t want to hear a thing about the politics of this for two reasons. One, because I took an oath of office, not an oath of party. Two, I understand the politics better than any of you. So if I’ve made this decision; it’s not because I’m ignorant of the political situation.
Look, I think that Harris could be better at this, too. Whether it’s the dust-up about whatever did or didn’t happen with Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida or anything else, I think what she needs to do is continue to be present vocally about the fact that this needs to be a unifying moment for the country, that Americans take care of other Americans.
Bruni: I want to be clear: You’re taking issue with the fact that Vice President Harris made some public statements criticizing Ron DeSantis for supposedly not taking her phone calls? And whatever’s going on there, that’s not the best use of her public statements? Is that right?
Christie: Correct, correct. And I think that instead of being critical, if the issue comes up — “have you been communicating with Governor DeSantis?” — the answer should be, “I’m standing to unify the country to make sure that everyone is taken care of who winds up being harmed by these natural disasters. And I will do whatever I need to do to make sure that the people of Florida get the aid and help that they need.”
The only people who are going to be able to help solve the problems financially in North Carolina and what may be coming in Florida is the federal government. State government can’t do it by itself.
Bruni: Putting aside what Vice President Harris did or didn’t say, if, as has been reported, DeSantis was not taking her calls, and if he did not choose to link arms with President Biden when the president went down to Florida, is he correctly serving the people of Florida from the perspective of something I think you practiced in 2012, which is that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar?
Christie: You’re not doing it correctly if you don’t do that. I can have my political preferences in terms of who I think would be better for the job of president of the United States, but there is one president at a time. And the governor — since he, or she, knows the state better than the president — should be the one telling the president: “Here’s where you go. Here’s what you need to see. Let me show you.” Governor DeSantis’s decision has to do with the political penalty that they all saw me pay within the party for having done it the right way.
Bruni: You wrote a guest essay for us before the Harris-Trump debate. And you said that you were still forming an opinion of Vice President Harris. It’s almost a month since that debate. Do you have a more informed opinion of her today?
Christie: I certainly have a better understanding of her political skills. And I think that she has displayed some really significant political skills over the course of the last — what is it now? — about 80 days or so that she’s been a candidate. I admire her for that because it is not easy to perform on that stage with no notice.
What I haven’t heard from her yet, which I need to hear, are the sacrifices that she’s going to be willing to make politically to unify the country if she becomes president. I need to hear from her that she is going to be different than Donald Trump was and, quite frankly, different than Joe Biden was, because Joe Biden didn’t do much, in my mind, to try to unify the country and work with the other side.
I’m not going to vote for the lesser of two evils anymore. I’ve done it before. I did it with Trump in ’16. I got motivated to support Trump because I thought Hillary Clinton would be such a bad president, you know? I’m not making a decision like that again. She’s got time to convince me. But she hasn’t done that yet.
Bruni: Are you saying you may just not vote on Election Day?
Christie: I’ll vote, but I may not vote for president.
Bruni: Is that really a responsible thing to do?
Christie: I have an obligation to vote for the person that I think is best if I believe there’s a best choice. I will not vote for Trump. Practically, my vote is not going to matter in New Jersey, anyway. She’s going to win New Jersey by 10 to 14 points.
Bruni: Is she going to win, period?
Christie: It’s a total jump ball. Things have trended much better for the Democratic side since she became the candidate. If Joe Biden had been the candidate, this race would be over. Her political skills have now made this a jump-ball race.
Bruni: If she wins, she has said she will put at least one Republican in her cabinet. If she offered you a cabinet position, would you take it?
Christie: It would depend on two things: what was the position, and what role did she say she wanted me to play? Am I there as a mannequin or am I there to actually provide her with effective advice and counsel? The country’s more important than anything else. And if I thought that I could help the country, look, any president that calls on me, I would be willing to help.
Bruni: You’d be triply popular in your own party then, wouldn’t you?
Christie: Hey, you know what? At the end of the day, you and I don’t even know what my party’s going to look like after Nov. 5. I would argue that if Donald Trump loses the election, the party is going to go through an enormous catharsis. And I don’t know where that catharsis lands, but I will tell you, it won’t be with Lara Trump as chair of the Republican National Committee.
Bruni: But if Donald Trump loses that election, you and I both know he will tell us he did not lose that election. How terrified should we all be — and I use “terrified” rather than “scared” on purpose — of what he’s going to say or, rather, foment if he loses? Is Jan. 6 just child’s play compared to what could happen then?
Christie: No. I’m not nearly as scared as I think the country had every right to be on Jan. 6 for one big reason: He’s not the president of the United States anymore. What he could do — or prevent doing — as president is significantly more than what he can do as the club champion at Mar-a-Lago.
Bruni: Governor, he’s No. 1 at everything! Biggest inauguration crowd and on and on.
Christie: And coming from a guy who should know, his body is beautiful.
Bruni: Is he not as cognitively fit as he was a year ago, two years ago, four years ago?
Christie: He’s not. He wasn’t as good in 2020 as he was in 2016. (In Trump debate prep) I played Hillary Clinton in 2016. I played Joe Biden in 2020. I saw decline in his skills in ’20 from ’16, and you see significant declines still. What masks it is that he is still physically pretty vibrant and energetic, unlike the president. But if you listen to him and his ability to make a point, it’s not nearly as good now as it was in 2016, not nearly. Today’s Donald Trump would not have come up with the Rosie O’Donnell line in response to what Megyn Kelly did in that first debate. He would have yelled at her and cursed at her.
Bruni: I’ve heard you on Donald Trump a lot. I haven’t heard you much on JD Vance. How do you feel about JD Vance being, if Trump wins, a heartbeat away from the presidency?
Christie: JD is a very smart guy, and he’s very skilled, polished. I just know what JD has said to me over the years about Donald Trump and how it’s 180 degrees opposite of what he says now, and his story is simply not true about when those changes happened. And so that makes me really, really doubt his character as well, and whether his ambition is outrunning his character. JD looks like he’s trying to impersonate Trump in many ways. And I don’t think that’s a laudable goal.
Bruni: Toward the end of his debate with Tim Walz, he would not say that Trump lost the 2020 election. Is it an ipso facto disqualifying thing to not be willing to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election?
Christie: Absolutely.
Bruni: For any political office, right?
Christie: For anyone. I don’t care who it is. And I’ve seen all these guys out there — I saw Tom Cotton dancing around it and Mike Johnson dancing around it. And they all don’t want to incur the wrath of the Sun King.
They all know that he lost the 2020 race — all of them. Lindsey Graham knows it. Tom Cotton knows it. Marco Rubio knows it. Ted Cruz knows it. They’re afraid of him. And I can tell them, as someone who’s known him longer than any of them, there’s nothing to be afraid of. And if they think that that’s untrue, they should call Vladimir Putin, because he sure as heck isn’t afraid of Donald Trump.
They’ll all rationalize it later on, when this is over, and especially if Trump loses. You’ll hear them on Sunday shows saying: “Well, yes, I knew it. But look at how awful President Harris is and what she’s done to our budget” to our this, that and fill in the blank. “And so I felt like I had to do whatever I could to save this country from a Harris presidency.” I’ll be out there, too, and my reply will be, “If you were so concerned about saving the country from a Harris presidency, what the hell were you doing supporting Donald Trump in the primary? Because all the guy has done since 2016 is lose.”
Bruni: Let’s hope Nov. 5 doesn’t change that. In the meantime, we have a mess to clean up in North Carolina.
Christie: When we bring it back to the disaster stuff, in the end, your No. 1 job as a public official, especially as an executive, is to protect the health and safety of the people that you get elected by. And these moments are the most defining moments.
And what these folks who are playing around with this and making it political don’t understand or are willfully ignoring is that you will be judged ultimately by how you perform in this moment.
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