WASHINGTON – With his stock as a 2016 presidential hopeful having dropped precipitously, Chris Christie insisted in an interview with Laura Ingraham prior to the Conservative Action Political Conference that his track record as governor of New Jersey would not be a millstone around his neck should he decide to run for the Oval Office.
“I don’t subscribe to the New York Times,” Christie said. “I don’t care what they write about me.”
“I gave up the New York Times for Lent,” Christie joked, “but my parish priest told me that doesn’t count, because for Lent, you have to give up something you’ll actually miss.”
Christie said the word that best described him was “passionate.”
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“I am the son of a Sicilian father and an Irish mother, and I’m passionate about what I believe in,” he said. “Sometimes people need to be told to sit down and shut up, and that sometimes includes people in the Obama White House.”
Christie acknowledged he has not had the best relationship with the teachers union in New Jersey.
“I favor charter schools, and that’s not popular with the teachers union,” Christie said. “I plan to continue cutting state spending, and that’s not popular either with the teachers union.”
Ingraham asked what position Christie would take on immigration if he decided to run for president.
“The most entrepreneurial people in the world are the people in the United States, and that’s why people from around the world want to come here,” he said, rejecting Jeb Bush’s contention that Detroit should be repopulated with hard-working illegal immigrants. “What we need to do is to eliminate government regulations to make it easier for the people who live in Detroit to be more successful economically.”
Christie said he was not going to let polling data some 21 months away from the 2016 presidential election influence his evaluation of his chances to succeed if he decided to run for president.
"I will run a hard-fighting campaign where I will fight for the people who pay taxes in this country,” he stressed. “I’m a tough campaigner, and I will take my chances at it if I decide to run.”
“If the elites in the Washington back-room chose the next GOP presidential candidate, then Jeb Bush will be the nominee,” Christie conceded. “If it comes down to looking the voters in the eye and seeing who the voters like, I believe my chances are pretty good.”
Asked how he could successfully run for president against Hillary Clinton, Christie said he would fight for working people in the United States.
“I assure you, no parent in the United States is sitting around the kitchen table today saying if only the president could get the minimum wage raised, we would have everything we ever aspired for our children,” he said.
Check out WND's extensive coverage of the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference:
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John Bolton: Hillary 'unfit to command'
Rick Perry: America will survive Obama as it did Carter
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Rubio: Hillary 'yesterday,' Obama 'failed'
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Sarah Palin: Obama's VA 'killing our veterans'
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Conservatives warned against unprincipled, unproven candidates