look, this is something that is so deeply personal to a presidential candidate, particularly for someone like chris christie once before. there are aren t a lot of politicians in our current american life who have had to end two presidential campaigns and it s just a handful. he knows how difficult this is. he wasn t in this for a vanity run and he was in for a very specific mission, a kamikaze mission trying to take down donald trump. you can see the crowds were not what he hoped. hold on for a minute. i want to hear what he has to say. here s chris christie. i am happy to be here in windham. thank you for taking the time to come. i m glad we re here, and thank you for coming tonight. i appreciate you being here and i appreciate your support. we started these town halls the
awful. did somebody remind him he s not the president anymore? this is a vanity run amok. it does a disservice to our servicemen and women who are bound by the rules. one of them was convicted and sent to three years in prison for mishandling classified information. and then there are the ones that are speaking more like trump s defense attorneys than his competitors. you cannot have one faction of society weaponizing at the power of the state against factions that it doesn t like. is there a different standard for a democrat secretary of state versus a former republican president? this is my commitments on january 20th 2025, if i m elected the next u.s. president, to pardon donald j trump. well, whether to parted donald trump is a very hot topic on the campaign trail today. when you look at a parted, the issue was less about guilt and more about what s good for the country. and i think it would be terrible for the country to have a former president in prison for years because
to tiptoe around him but to go through him. to try to hit him head on saying that from the experience that he s had knowing him for 22 years the experience of running against him and not fearing well in 2016 and then really helping him a lot during his presidency. hoping trump ally. yes, helping trump la. then as erin said, tonight, you heard the terms that he knew that we get under donald trump s skin. loser, loser, loser, child, vanity run a mark, those kinds of things were clearly deliberate in order to try to egg donald trump on. not just tear him down, which is his primary goal but to try to get under his skin. john, is there a political appetite for any of this? if he can somehow bend the arc of the republican party back to where it used to be, even then some people might say are you a conservative enough,
either they win or we win. we win. and if we win, we no longer have a country. if the election were today ron desantis would win in new hampshire, there is no doubt about that in my mind. many of them don t believe they are going to be the nominee, that they are not going to be the president, they shouldn t run just as a vanity run. i think we ought to narrow the field. bret: larry hogan former governor of maryland. someone who may be running the governor the florida out in california talking about his legislative successes. i may have earned 50% of the vote but i earned 100 percent of the executive power and i intended to use it to advance the best interest of florida and to advance our common agenda. i m going on offense on all these issues. i m not just going to sit around and let hope things happen for me hope i m able to do good. because a lot of elected officials don t like to make
i didn t need to be an elective office. i just want to be a part of the solution. i cared about a future for the republican party and i want to get the country on the right tack. neil: you talk about avoiding that multi-car pile-up. i was counting the cars still piling up or candidates in this race, governor. as things stand now, we cowl have as many as 16. maybe i m off by a couple and a couple of don t runs. we had 17 in 2016. are we looking at the same kind of outcome in 2016? 2024? i sure hope not. that s what i was trying to avoid. each candidate should make the decision for themselves. you know, i would just suggest that any of them that don t believe they re going to be the nominee, they won t be the president, that they shouldn t run just as a vanity run. they shouldn t run to get a book deal or to get a cabinet post.