Thursday, June 6, 2013

Christie: I Like Him Because He'll Tell Me 'No'

Transcript

Governor Christie: Anybody who knows Jeff knows that he’s got a mind of his own and always has, and that’s one of the reasons why I value our friendship so much. You know, Charlie, there’s lots of people who, you know, you hear about these kind of old sayings about politics and about people who get into executive positions that they need to have people around them who can tell them no. 
They need to have people around them that will tell them the truth. The reason I’ve loved having Jeff Chiesa around me, both as US Attorney and as Governor, is because he’s one of those people, and everybody in the Executive Branch knows this. I can’t tell you how many times when he was Chief Counsel that there was bad news to be given or somebody had to deliver something that they didn’t necessarily want to deliver. 
How many times they went into Jeff’s office first to either try to get him to do it for them, or to get his advice on the best way to approach it because they knew that Jeff was somebody who could tell me the truth, even when he disagreed, and I assume that he’ll do the same thing in the US Senate. 
And as I said on Monday because there was a question, it might have been yours that was similar to this, if he calls me and asks me, ‘hey, there’s a vote for cloture on the following bill, what do you think I should do?’ I’m going to hang up. I’ve got enough to do here. He wouldn’t make that call, but if he did, I’d tell him, ‘do what you think is right. That’s what I sent you down there for,’ and I think that’s exactly what he’ll do.

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