The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 383. Education, Foreign Policy, Crime, and Collegiality： the Chris Christie plan

00:00:00.940 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

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00:00:50.980 Hello everyone. I'm very pleased to announce dates for my forthcoming European tour.

00:01:01.340 I will be visiting along with Tammy, Belfast, Northern Ireland, October 15th.

00:01:07.760 Lisbon, Portugal, October 18th.

00:01:12.340 Stavenger, Norway, October 20th.

00:01:14.980 Tickets are now available on my website, jordanbpeterson.com.

00:01:43.920 Hope to see you there.

00:02:01.460 Hello everyone watching and listening.

00:02:04.560 Today I'm pleased to speak with lawyer, federal prosecutor, and former New Jersey governor,

00:02:10.880 now running for president, Chris Christie.

00:02:14.580 We discuss the unfortunate and disproportional power of teachers unions,

00:02:19.620 the potentially perpetual state of the Ukraine-Russia war,

00:02:23.860 the impact of the Biden laptop scandal,

00:02:27.480 and why Donald Trump, at least in Mr. Christie's opinion,

00:02:31.980 might not be the right Republican candidate going forward.

00:02:35.100 All right. Well, thank you for agreeing to talk to me today and to everyone who's listening and

00:02:41.700 watching. It's quite an exciting development as far as I'm concerned to see these long-form

00:02:46.920 dialogues take their place in political discourse because it really allows people the opportunity

00:02:52.360 to unfold their vision. So I thought the first thing I might ask you, because I think this is

00:02:57.160 the question that's foremost on my mind and should be on the minds of people who are watching and

00:03:02.700 listening, is why do you think that you would be a good president? What is it that makes you stand

00:03:08.500 out from the rest of the pack, say, on the Republican side, on the Democrat side as well?

00:03:13.720 Why should people be concentrating on your campaign?

00:03:17.880 Well, thanks. First of all, thanks for having me on. And I look forward to this kind of long

00:03:22.840 forum conversation as well. I think it's much more informative for folks. I'd say three things come

00:03:28.760 to mind immediately. The first is that, you know, I think we've gotten in our country too small in

00:03:36.860 terms of our politics. We're arguing about what I think are relatively small things in the grand scheme

00:03:43.660 of what our country should be working on. We're dividing each other into smaller and smaller

00:03:48.720 groups. We're pitting each other against each other. And anger seems to be the predominant emotion.

00:03:56.980 I want to be president because I want to do the big things. This country, I think, has always been

00:04:02.260 at its greatest when it does big things. And, you know, for me, some of those examples of some of

00:04:09.360 those things are our educational system. K-12, I think, is failing our country and our families

00:04:16.360 miserably when a third of our kids can't read at grade level in this country. We need to have a

00:04:22.660 radical change in the way we educate kids K-12. And I'm going to go into some more detail on that,

00:04:28.260 hopefully later in the conversation. But I want to put parents much more in charge of those things

00:04:32.700 and empower them to do it. Second, crime in this country has become a near epidemic problem in our

00:04:41.320 cities. And it's affecting quality of life and the ability of people to enjoy all the great things

00:04:47.680 that we have in America's cities. And this is because prosecutors locally have decided they don't

00:04:53.120 want to prosecute quality of life crime and violent crime in the way that they used to. I think if you

00:04:59.320 don't have a sense of the rule of law and law and order in your country, that that diminishes

00:05:06.300 everyone's ability to enjoy their lives and to make the most of them. And so as president and I would

00:05:11.860 make sure that we sent federal prosecutors into all the cities that have significant crime problems.

00:05:17.920 If the local prosecutors won't prosecute that violent crime, we will. And make sure that we clean up

00:05:22.680 what's going on in our cities. Third, I think that America's got to continue to play a leading role in

00:05:28.880 the world. And I think we have too much dissent in our own party, which is fine to have the argument.

00:05:33.820 But I think the argument needs to be resolved on behalf of America being a leader around the world.

00:05:39.280 And so that's why I favor our support in Ukraine and would enhance it, increase it, because I think

00:05:44.620 it's a proxy war right now between the United States and the West and China. China supplying the

00:05:50.700 money for Russia to prosecute this war. And the expansionism that has always been a part of Russian

00:05:58.140 foreign policy is right on display. And we need to stop it right where it is, because a free and secure

00:06:04.360 Europe is very important to America's political and economic future. And lastly, what I'd say is that

00:06:13.300 we don't talk to each other anymore in government. We tweet at each other or whatever it's called now,

00:06:20.660 X at each other. We use social media to do that stuff. The reason I'm different is because I was a

00:06:27.460 Republican governor for eight years in a Democratic state with a Democratic state legislature. And I had

00:06:34.160 to figure out how to work with the other side to accomplish things that mattered and that were

00:06:39.620 consistent with my principles. There's nobody else in the race that's had that experience.

00:06:44.260 And that's most what it's like in Washington, D.C. And we need a president, again, who's willing to

00:06:49.320 spend his or her political capital on building those relationships and trying to get things done.

00:06:56.100 I've always operated, Jordan, in my career in politics on the principle that it's harder to hate up

00:07:02.660 close. And the more that we get to know each other, the more we get to know each other's families,

00:07:08.640 what motivated us to get into public life, what our priorities are, what we really want to

00:07:13.240 accomplish, the greater chance we have to be able to get things done for the American people.

00:07:18.860 And so I think that makes me a lot different than any other candidate in this race. And it will allow

00:07:25.880 me to solve problems like immigration, solve problems like our entitlement programs and their

00:07:31.160 impending bankruptcy and the effect that would have on the American people. So that's why people should be

00:07:37.280 focusing on me and on my campaign. Okay. So you outlined four basic categories, education,

00:07:45.680 law and order, let's say foreign policy, America's role in the world, and then dialogue between

00:07:51.500 Republicans and Democrats. Let's start at the top of that list on the education side. I know that as

00:07:57.420 governor, you introduced a number of educational reforms. I was reading today that at least at the

00:08:04.680 moment, there's no long-term indication that they've actually improved educational performance.

00:08:10.200 That's not surprising to me because it actually turns out to be quite difficult to reform education

00:08:15.780 in a way that actually makes a difference. And maybe that's wrong. I haven't done a lot of

00:08:22.120 delving into the direct consequences of your reforms, but I do have some specific questions on the

00:08:27.160 education front. So, and here's one that's really perplexed me for a long period of time. So I worked

00:08:34.540 at Harvard in 92 to 98, and I spent a lot of time analyzing research that was done in the departments

00:08:44.940 or in the faculties of education. And the faculties of education since the early sixties have abdicated

00:08:51.600 their responsibility entirely. They generally train the least motivated students at university,

00:08:59.880 often the ones with the worst grades devolve into teaching because they can't figure out what else to

00:09:04.940 do. The quality of research that the faculties of education have produced, to call it appalling,

00:09:10.660 has barely scraped the surface. They've championed whole word reading. They've championed self-esteem

00:09:15.700 training, emotional, social learning, multiple intelligences, like a whole emotional intelligence,

00:09:22.580 a whole panoply of concepts that have no scientific standing whatsoever and have done nothing but hurt

00:09:29.900 kids. And they've become, they're likely among the most woke disciplines, the farthest left disciplines

00:09:36.140 that have emerged within the university. Yet they have a hammerlock on teacher certification,

00:09:41.640 and that gives them access to 50% of American state budgets. So one of the things I'm curious about,

00:09:47.720 I also noticed that you had chaired the Republican Governors Association. I cannot understand why the

00:09:53.840 Republican governors haven't taken teacher certification away from the faculties of education.

00:10:00.400 I mean, why are they allowed to have a hammerlock on teacher production? There's no evidence whatsoever that

00:10:05.480 they're good at doing their jobs, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. So, well, that's a specific

00:10:10.660 question I have, but I'm also curious about what else you're devoted to on the educational reform

00:10:17.140 front and why you think it would work. Well, let me start by talking about your specific thing.

00:10:23.820 It was one of the big fights that I had in New Jersey that I wound up not being able to win

00:10:28.040 because I needed legislative support to get it done. And as hard as I tried to do it, the teachers'

00:10:35.140 unions, as you know, are an enormous political force. And while I diminished a lot of their influence,

00:10:41.320 I couldn't get off of the teacher certification front. And I think you put your finger on something

00:10:47.320 that is extraordinarily important if you're going to reform our national education system,

00:10:52.620 is the idea that great teachers do not often come from departments of education

00:11:00.360 in our universities and colleges. And so that's one of the fronts that we have to have a national

00:11:06.720 conversation and arguments about. More broadly, I do think that when you talk about the hammerlock

00:11:15.300 on 50% of state budgets, you're right. And in some instances, it's even more in terms of the amount

00:11:21.700 of money that's spent. We're spending about $800 billion nationwide a year on K-12 education.

00:11:28.820 And I think it's time to have the federal government lead the way and encourage states

00:11:36.700 that are already providing educational choice and those that are not to move much more towards

00:11:43.620 a choice model. And not just for underprivileged folks, but for everybody. And that if public schools

00:11:51.360 will only get better if they have to compete, and if they have to compete in a meaningful way

00:11:58.040 against other options, private schools, parochial schools, but also within the public system,

00:12:05.520 a broader availability of charter schools and Renaissance schools, which operate much differently.

00:12:10.060 So when you look back in New Jersey, one of the places where we had, our reforms did have a huge

00:12:15.400 impact was in the city of Camden, where they had six of the 10 lowest performing schools,

00:12:22.820 individual schools in the entire state. And what we did was take over the Board of Education there.

00:12:29.340 And we encouraged the development of charter and Renaissance schools in the city and authorized them

00:12:35.380 to compete with the traditional public schools. And what you've seen, Jordan, is an enormous increase

00:12:42.480 in both the reading and math scores. If you look at the last 10 years in the city of Camden,

00:12:48.280 there's been an enormous increase in that, in the K-5 range. And I think that that competition

00:12:57.460 leads to other reforms that are really necessary. For instance, having a longer school year,

00:13:06.160 having a 10 and a half to an 11 month school year, rather than the school year we do now,

00:13:12.120 having longer school days, you know, kids need more time, both every day and throughout the year

00:13:19.440 to be educated in the right way. And especially kids who come from our inner cities and may not

00:13:25.680 necessarily have the support at home to encourage the type of learning that becomes holistic.

00:13:30.840 And so we need to reform this in every way we can and provide more choice and give parents the

00:13:38.600 financial resources they need to be able to effectuate that choice. So if you want to go to

00:13:43.260 a public school, if you have a good public school in your town, continue to go to it and your money

00:13:48.480 will go to that public school. But if you choose to send them to a charter school, a Renaissance

00:13:53.120 school, a private school, a parochial school, you should have the resources in an account to be able

00:13:58.760 to spend on your child's education rather than continuing to kowtow to the public sector teachers

00:14:05.600 unions that, as we saw most starkly during COVID, care only about protecting the least of their members

00:14:14.080 and not in the main in educating our children. So I would like to delve a bit more into, you said that

00:14:22.740 when you tried to transform the hammerlock of the teachers union, say, on the provision of teaching

00:14:32.720 in New Jersey, that you battled to a standstill. And that was partly because you were also facing a

00:14:38.740 Democrat-controlled legislative assembly. And so, of course, that makes it more difficult. But

00:14:43.480 I'm still, my curiosity in this front isn't satiated yet because it looks to me like such

00:14:50.220 a colossal failure on the Republican side, both at the state level, local, state, and national level,

00:14:57.260 to allow, you know, we're in the midst of a terrible culture war. It's not exactly obvious that

00:15:03.280 even the classic liberals or the conservatives are winning. It's clearly the case that the radicals have

00:15:10.980 got a hold of the education system. They're doing that through the faculties of education.

00:15:16.360 I can't understand how it can be that the Republicans have essentially been blind to this

00:15:20.860 for 60 years. It's 60 years now, given that the long-term future of the political state rests upon

00:15:29.160 the information that kids are receiving in schools with regards to their political education.

00:15:35.760 But now you, but you have hands-on experience with this. You tried to fight the fight. And

00:15:40.620 it was very, very difficult for you to bring about any reform. So two questions there. Why exactly

00:15:47.080 was it so difficult? What is it that the teachers unions manage with their access to these great

00:15:53.060 walloping chunks of financial resource? And also, why do you think, why are you convinced that

00:15:59.500 the provision of choice among parents is the proper primary target in relationship to educational reform?

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00:17:44.660 First, on the battle on certification, I agree with you, by the way, in states where

00:17:54.740 Republicans control everything. It's astonishing to me that you wouldn't focus on teacher certification

00:18:01.680 and taking that out of the hands of the professional teachers unions. And so to me,

00:18:10.920 it was one of the things that we focused on very early on. So it wasn't something we missed.

00:18:15.560 It gets to your second point, which is, I'll give you, for instance, in my state,

00:18:22.280 we have 200,000 members of the teachers union in our state that create through their dues,

00:18:31.480 which at the time I was governor, were $700 a year. So the teachers union was collecting $140 million

00:18:38.460 a year, and they didn't pay a nickel toward teacher salaries, teacher pension, or teacher

00:18:43.520 health care. And that money was just a slush fund to reward their friends and to punish their enemies.

00:18:49.840 That's a lot of money, Jordan, in a state. And the best indication of it is if you look at the

00:18:56.600 state capitol in Trenton, New Jersey, when I would look out the front door of the statehouse,

00:19:02.620 besides the statehouse, the second largest building on State Street in Trenton was the

00:19:09.000 teachers union building. It was no mistake. They wanted to send that message every time a

00:19:15.880 legislator walked in and out of that building, that they're bigger and stronger than any other

00:19:20.640 interest group in the state. Now, look, I campaigned against them and won twice statewide.

00:19:25.200 It's possible to win these things. But in a state legislature dominated by Democrats,

00:19:31.720 they essentially buy them, Jordan. I mean, they just buy them, both in terms of buying them with

00:19:37.220 favor, but also buying them through fear and intimidation. And, you know, they went after

00:19:43.320 the Senate, a Democratic Senate president in my state, because he went with me on some educational

00:19:48.920 reform issues, most particularly pension reform for teachers and health benefit reform for teachers,

00:19:56.140 so they'd have to pay more into those systems to make them more solvent. They went after him

00:20:01.660 three different elections. And the guy is the president of the Iron Workers Union in New Jersey,

00:20:07.660 a fellow union member. They went after him three times. The third time, they finally defeated him.

00:20:12.080 And he's out of the legislature now. So they try to show persistence with their object lessons.

00:20:20.220 And in a state where you have a Democratic legislature or a Democratic governor, you just

00:20:24.900 saw this in Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro ran as a centrist Democrat for governor, promising that he would

00:20:32.480 provide educational choice. The Republican legislature put the bill on his desk, and he vetoed it under

00:20:38.680 pressure from the teachers' union and broke his word that he gave during the campaign and during

00:20:45.220 the transition. And so it's another example of it. Lastly, you asked why I focus on parental choice,

00:20:51.700 because I think it's one of the hardest arguments to argue against, that if, in fact, your education

00:20:58.460 that you're providing in the traditional public schools is so great, then, of course, parents would

00:21:03.280 choose it. But if it isn't, parents should have the right to make that choice for their kids, and it should

00:21:10.300 be any parent that gets the right to make that choice. I do think, Jordan, that our history has shown

00:21:16.960 that competition does almost always bring improvement and also exposes weakness. And that could be another

00:21:26.060 way to get at the teacher certification issue. Because remember, these charter schools, private schools,

00:21:31.700 parochial schools often can operate under different rules. They don't have unions in the main that they

00:21:38.780 have to deal with, and can hire some different folks. And I think that that can help by showing

00:21:44.280 how successful they are to break the hammerlock that you very rightly pointed out at the top of

00:21:50.640 this conversation on teacher certification in our public schools.

00:21:53.960 Right. So it allows for more experimentation with regards to the provision of education.

00:22:00.760 Correct.

00:22:01.140 Highlights weaknesses and allows for the poorer players to be deselected by the market.

00:22:09.320 Right. So the experimentation issue there seems key as well. It doesn't hurt as well, I suppose,

00:22:14.240 to also devolve back to parents the responsibility to pay some attention to exactly how their children are

00:22:19.880 being educated. What do you think strategically might be done apart from focusing on parental choice

00:22:27.760 amongst the Republicans or more classically liberal or conservatively oriented people to push back

00:22:35.540 against the monopoly that's enjoyed by the teachers unions and the teacher certification process?

00:22:43.620 What did you learn strategically from the battle you engaged in in New Jersey?

00:22:49.280 Well, with the successes that we had, Jordan, the way we got them was by pointing out commonsensical

00:22:55.300 problems with the way the system operates. So for instance, I did over 100 town hall meetings on this

00:23:02.500 issue across our state on the issues of pension and health benefits. When I became governor, a typical

00:23:12.300 teacher who would retire at 25 years of service with a large pension, 70 percent of salary of their highest

00:23:20.760 salary, they would have paid where they would have used all the money they paid into the system after two

00:23:27.720 and a half years of retirement. And teachers never paid a nickel towards their health benefits in our state

00:23:35.220 while they were working and in retirement. The taxpayers paid all of it. So I used to go to town hall meetings

00:23:41.320 and say, how many of you would like that deal? How many of you have that deal? And nobody would raise

00:23:47.260 their hand. And I said, well, you're paying for that. When people came to recognize that they were paying for

00:23:54.240 that type of extravagant retirement and health benefits system, the teachers union approval in our

00:24:00.660 state, because we polled it, went from when I started these meetings in the mid-70s down to the mid-30s.

00:24:08.160 And people saw the union as selfish and self-consumed and abusive of the taxpayers. What that did, Jordan,

00:24:15.400 was it opened up the conversation on everything else. Because once you show that the representatives of

00:24:21.360 these teachers were selfish and self-consumed and not focused on quality, that was problem one.

00:24:30.220 Problem two was I went, in order to try to break this monopoly, I went to some of the worst school districts in our

00:24:36.660 state and pointed out two significant facts beside the underperformance of the students. The first was that they

00:24:45.360 turned out to be the most expensive school districts. So, for instance, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, we were paying

00:24:51.940 $44,000 a pupil to get awful performance. In the city of Newark, we had $36,000 per pupil for awful performance. In the city

00:25:03.940 of Camden, $38,000 per pupil. They could have gone to any private school in America at that time for that number or less and

00:25:12.860 gotten a significantly better education. Secondly, we then talked about the way the teachers union

00:25:19.540 protects the worst of their members. So, for instance, in Newark, we had over 100 teachers who

00:25:26.600 literally reported every day to what they called the rubber room, where they were not permitted to

00:25:31.640 teach anymore, but the teachers union prevented them from being fired. So, the school district made the

00:25:37.260 decision, Jordan, if you believe it, that it would be better off for the kids to pay these teachers to

00:25:42.800 do nothing than to have them in a classroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you pointed these things out to

00:25:48.560 folks, it opened up the entire conversation. So, for instance, I was able to negotiate with Randy

00:25:55.720 Weingarten, believe it or not, merit pay for teachers in Newark. Now, for the first time, we would actually

00:26:02.060 reward the teachers who were showing greater results with greater pay and take away this kind of

00:26:09.360 monopolistic view that every teacher is the same and every teacher should be paid the same based purely

00:26:14.760 upon experience rather than on performance. That would have never happened, Jordan, if I hadn't

00:26:20.380 brought their poll numbers down to the mid-30s and they were really worried that the legislature that

00:26:25.380 they had bought might be willing to sell them down the river. So, you know, these are the things that

00:26:30.400 we need to do on a national level. And by the way, the good thing about Republican governors in some of

00:26:35.360 these states has been that they have expanded choice significantly. They need to take the next

00:26:40.280 steps. And with a federal government that could condition educational funding on taking those new

00:26:47.740 steps, which is what I would do as president, you can encourage even more people, I think, to be able

00:26:52.820 to do some of these reforms that have shown to be effective. All right. So, well, let's turn

00:26:59.740 let's turn to, I guess, what strikes me as the second most crucial element on your list of policy

00:27:09.620 foci. And that would be foreign policy, especially in relationship to what's happening in Ukraine and

00:27:18.980 with Russia. And so that's obviously a terrible conundrum and a terribly dangerous situation. And so the first

00:27:27.600 question I guess I would have for you on with regard to that issue is, how do you think we got

00:27:35.000 ourselves into this mess? I mean, we had a chance in the 1990s, I believe, to have pulled Russia firmly

00:27:41.560 into the sphere of the West. And we seem to have bungled out somewhat irredeemably. And now we have

00:27:47.740 this terrible war in Ukraine that seems to be settling down for the long haul, as far as I can tell,

00:27:53.160 with the additional danger of emboldening China. And so, and I don't see, I haven't heard from

00:27:59.680 anybody I've interviewed or really anybody I've talked to, anything that constitutes a reasonable

00:28:05.300 vision for victory or peace. So two questions, you know, how in the world did we manage to get into

00:28:12.740 something this idiotic? And number two, given that we are here and we could have the best possible of

00:28:20.180 all outcomes, whatever that would be, what would those outcomes look like and how would you work

00:28:24.880 towards them? Okay, so how did we get here? I believe it was a series of mistakes and

00:28:30.580 mis-evaluations, starting with the Clinton administration. And every president since then

00:28:38.200 has been guilty of this. So I think Bill Clinton did not focus as he should have. I mean, George

00:28:46.740 Bush 41 gave him the opportunity you just spoke about by the Berlin Wall coming down because of

00:28:54.180 the efforts, I believe, of Reagan and Bush 41, the ending of the Soviet Union, and the setting up of

00:29:01.080 at least what was a nominally democratic Russian federation under Boris Yeltsin to try to bring

00:29:08.960 them into the league of fair and just nations. I don't think Bill Clinton nearly spent the time

00:29:18.380 focused on that that he should have. And because of that, because of his distracted focus on foreign

00:29:24.440 policy in other places, I think he missed an opportunity with Russia. Then I think Bush 43

00:29:32.420 mis-evaluated Vladimir Putin. I think you might remember him saying, you know, I looked into his

00:29:39.120 eyes and saw his soul. Well, he obviously didn't. Or the soul he thought he saw wasn't there. Vladimir Putin

00:29:47.020 from the beginning, in my view, was a former KGB operative who was a czarist Soviet type of leader who was

00:29:57.460 intent on. And he said that the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy, historic

00:30:04.060 tragedy of his lifetime. So how do you expect, Jordan, that you're going to willingly have a guy

00:30:10.520 like that give up his expansionist aspirations? And so under George W. Bush, he was allowed to go back

00:30:20.300 into Georgia. No ramifications. Under Barack Obama, he was allowed to seize Crimea and other parts of

00:30:29.900 Ukraine. No ramifications. Under Donald Trump, he continued to mask troops on the border of Ukraine.

00:30:39.180 And Donald Trump did not supply, as Barack Obama did not, Ukraine with the type of weapons that could

00:30:45.880 deter Russia from wanting to invade. And ultimately, Joe Biden, given how badly he botched the withdrawal

00:30:53.060 from Afghanistan, sent a signal to Putin that he was not up to fighting this fight. And Putin made his move

00:31:01.700 to do what he'd always wanted to do, was bring Ukraine back into the Russian Federation. And so the way we got

00:31:08.320 into this mess was a series of inattentiveness, mis-evaluation, and weakness that was read by Putin

00:31:18.840 as permission. Because when we didn't fight him on Georgia and we didn't fight him on Crimea,

00:31:24.840 you could say it's reasonable for Putin to conclude that we might not fight him on taking all of Ukraine.

00:31:30.460 We hadn't made Ukraine a part of NATO. So he had every reason to believe that we wouldn't fight

00:31:37.280 back on this. That's how I think we wound up here. I think because of the Chinese involvement in this,

00:31:44.600 remember, before Putin went to war, before he made the decision to go to war, President Xi came to

00:31:50.520 Moscow, met with Putin, and said publicly, there are no limits to the friendship between China and Russia.

00:31:58.800 Well, Putin took that to mean exactly what it meant, which was that China would financially support

00:32:05.200 Russia to go in and take Ukraine. And so we are now seeing a proxy war. The appropriate conclusion

00:32:14.540 of the war is to have Ukraine have the ability to drive Russia out of, in my view, the newest parts

00:32:25.320 of what they've taken of Ukraine, and then to negotiate the borders and to, thereafter, once the

00:32:34.560 war has ended, to admit Ukraine to NATO so that Russia would now know that there was a price to pay

00:32:43.540 for their invasion and their barbarism of their invasion. And that price is that now Finland is a

00:32:50.740 member of NATO on their border. You've got, and if you add Ukraine, this is a much worse result than

00:32:58.780 Russia could have ever expected on their border, but they brought it on themselves. And I will tell

00:33:04.480 you also that, having just gotten back from Ukraine 10 days ago, I can tell you that the barbarism that's

00:33:12.440 gone on there by the Russian army is unspeakable. The murder of civilians and burying them in shallow

00:33:19.640 graves, the gouging out of eyes while people are alive, cutting off of years, and in my view, Jordan,

00:33:26.320 worse than anything. 20,000 children, Ukrainian children, have been kidnapped by the Russian army

00:33:33.700 and sent to Russia to be reprogrammed to work against Ukraine. I met some of these mothers who have had

00:33:40.700 their children taken away from them. They don't know whether their children are dead or alive,

00:33:45.220 whether they're being cared for or abused, and whether they'll ever see them again.

00:33:49.200 These are the type of things that America cannot permit an authoritarian regime to do

00:33:54.320 to a free country and to do so with impunity. And we need to send a message, the West as a whole

00:34:02.360 needs to send a message with American leadership that that's not permissible. Because if we don't,

00:34:09.160 Putin will not stop there. Remember, the Russians have always wanted to have Poland,

00:34:14.720 because Poland was the way that they were invaded in both world wars. And they have wanted that level

00:34:20.560 of buffer. And I so I don't believe if we permit this, that he'll stop at Ukraine, that he'll continue

00:34:26.520 to try to reassemble as best he can, the old Soviet Union.

00:34:29.660 So the concerns for me in that regard are twofold. And you outlined a bit of what might constitute a

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00:35:54.320 First issue is after World War I, Germany was severely punished for its expansionist

00:36:02.280 proclivities and that resulted in the Treaty of Versailles. And that was designed to permanently

00:36:07.080 weaken Germany. And that turned out to be, that vindictive treaty turned out to be a very,

00:36:12.000 very, very bad idea. So attempting to permanently weaken a powerful industrial economy, we have some

00:36:19.840 historical precedent for assuming that that might breed exactly the opposite result. So I've talked

00:36:27.700 to hawks on the American side who think that the investment of tens of billions of dollars so far into

00:36:33.560 Ukraine, if the consequence of that was the weakening of Russia's military might, then that was a

00:36:40.380 small price to pay. But the Treaty of Versailles issue lurks in my mind as a counterexample.

00:36:47.160 Now, we might hope for regime change in Russia as a consequence of the difficulties of this war. But

00:36:55.540 again, if you look at Russia historically, it's by no means obvious that Putin is the worst leader

00:37:01.280 that Russia has ever had. And plus, it also strikes me as risky to destabilize the conventional forces

00:37:11.180 of an extremely powerfully armed nuclear enemy, given that once the normal courses of warfare are

00:37:21.840 exhausted, the conventional forces, the nuclear option is the only one left. And so it seems to me

00:37:27.840 that we may be tempting Russia in that direction. And then finally, it's not obvious to me at all that

00:37:34.000 the Russians will give up these newer territories. You're speaking of the Donbass, I believe, and the

00:37:40.180 territories on the eastern side. Now, I don't know ever when I'm reading reliable information from that

00:37:46.460 area of the world. But my understanding is there is some degree of support among the local population,

00:37:52.740 especially the Russian speakers, for the Russian, what, incursion into those territories. And so,

00:37:59.980 and I'm not trying to justify that. That's not my point. I'm trying to lay out the complexities.

00:38:05.580 My sense is that Russia regards these as rightful territories of their state, and that they'll be

00:38:13.220 very, very loath to give up any territory. It's hard for me to imagine that Putin could do that as well

00:38:18.260 without having to declare something like defeat, which is very unlikely. It's a very unlikely thing

00:38:23.580 for him to do, given all the options he has in front of him. So why do you think it's realistic

00:38:31.240 to assume that with sufficient pressure, the Russians will give up those eastern territories,

00:38:37.420 Donbass? And to what degree are you concerned that pushing in that direction will tilt the Russians

00:38:44.640 towards, well, one option is obviously the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

00:38:50.860 And so I see way more ways of this getting out of hand than I see ways of it proceeding

00:38:57.040 towards something approximating a reasonable conclusion. So, well, I'll leave you with that

00:39:02.820 mess of questions to juggle.

00:39:04.900 As you say, a lot to unpack there. So let me start, I believe, where you started, which

00:39:11.120 is I am not advocating for a Treaty of Versailles with Russia, and I'm not advocating for intentional

00:39:19.540 destabilization of Russia or demilitarization, which is an absolutely unrealistic goal, which

00:39:29.500 is what happened to the Germans in the near term after the Treaty of Versailles. So I'm not

00:39:35.280 advocating for that at all. And I do think that there are real concerns about advocating for regime

00:39:41.640 change, because in Russia, the devil you know may be better than the devil you don't. And we've seen

00:39:48.760 that through history. So I'm not advocating for either one of those things. And I want to be clear that

00:39:56.160 I'm not saying that victory would look like regime change in Russia. I am concerned about them as a

00:40:02.640 nuclear power being destabilized. And so I'm not advocating for those things. What I am saying,

00:40:10.020 though, is that we have not yet tested fully how much military pressure can be put on Putin to get

00:40:19.980 him to concede some of those areas on the eastern side and the Donbass. We have not armed

00:40:26.140 enough. Let me give you an example. When I was in Ukraine 10 days ago, President Zelensky told me

00:40:32.280 that on the average day in August, Russia is shooting 56,000 artillery shells into Ukraine. Ukraine is

00:40:43.860 responding with 6,000. Now, almost an 11 to 1 problem is not giving Ukraine what they need to be able to

00:40:54.920 prosecute the war in the most effective way they can. And so I think Joe Biden has given them enough,

00:41:04.020 just enough not to lose, but not enough to win. And so part of what I think we need to do here is to give

00:41:14.000 the Ukrainians the ability to prosecute the war in the way they see fit and then see how Russia reacts.

00:41:21.120 It may be, once we've armed Ukraine sufficiently for them to meet all of their strategic goals

00:41:30.060 militarily, that Russia still will not concede some of those areas. Well, then that's when you sit down

00:41:38.440 and have a conversation with your ally about what's the best deal we can make here to bring this to a

00:41:45.280 conclusion. But you can't convince them, the Ukrainians, it's in their interest to do that

00:41:51.300 when you haven't given them the ability as they see it, and I think just given the numbers their

00:41:56.440 right, to be able to prosecute the war in as aggressive a way as it's being prosecuted against

00:42:02.380 them. And so if we're in, we need to go all in from a hardware perspective. The other reason to do that,

00:42:12.040 of course, Jordan, is the message it sends to China vis-a-vis Taiwan and other areas in Asia,

00:42:20.420 that they need to see that we are willing to stand up and allow an ally to have what they need to have

00:42:28.020 to aggressively prosecute their own defense. And China's watching very closely on this front,

00:42:35.200 and we need to send that message both as a country and as an alliance very clearly to them.

00:42:42.280 And by the way, I believe if we had done that early on in Russia, we wouldn't be in this circumstance

00:42:47.880 with Ukraine. And we should take that as a lesson for China and Taiwan and other areas in Asia.

00:42:55.980 So I think that tries to answer specifically a number of the things that you laid out in your questions.

00:43:04.100 Okay, so I'm going to ask one more question with regard to foreign policy, especially

00:43:11.760 pertaining to Ukraine. So the cynical part of me thinks, in relation to the dangers of the military

00:43:21.560 industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about back in the 1960s, that the war of attrition,

00:43:29.440 the endless war of attrition in Afghanistan came to a halt under Biden. And that put the military

00:43:36.340 contractor types in a difficult position because the endless market for their wares had now dried up.

00:43:42.680 Well, now we've got a situation where we have a war in Ukraine that's settling down to be a very,

00:43:49.640 very long and drawn out battle. And you said yourself that Biden has sent just enough to the

00:43:56.280 Ukrainians not to lose, but not enough to win. That certainly makes the possibility of a long

00:44:03.140 drawn out and hyper expensive war paramount. So one of the things I'm wondering about is,

00:44:10.140 do you think that the president with his relatively short term in power and the multitude of his potential

00:44:19.060 responsibilities and division of attention, as was the case with Clinton, do you actually think that

00:44:24.420 the president can step into a situation like this, a new president, with enough power and credibility

00:44:31.960 to stand up against the continually active implicit forces agitating for expensive war?

00:44:43.480 Yeah, I think you not only can you, but you must. Now, look, the part of the reason this is going to be

00:44:50.820 a longer war is because Obama, Trump and Biden have all failed to arm the Ukrainians quickly.

00:45:00.920 I mean, think about this, Jordan. They're now talking about F-16 training and saying it's going to take

00:45:06.460 until next summer to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s. This is absurd. And it's the result of

00:45:16.000 wanting to drag it out. So I think your suspicions in that regard could be alleviated if we had acted

00:45:25.000 more quickly. And I still think we can act quickly now. The Russians are still on their heels here.

00:45:31.160 You have to believe that Putin believed that he'd be flying the Russian flag over Kyiv by this point.

00:45:40.160 He's not anywhere close to that. And so we still have an opportunity by aggressively arming them

00:45:48.600 to shorten this conflict. If we continue to do what we're doing, you know, what passed is prologue.

00:45:55.700 And if we continue to act the way we're acting now and the war is not coming to an end, but is

00:46:01.160 that a stalemate? Well, then you either have to, you know, act differently or you're going to

00:46:08.220 continue to have stalemate. So you either have to withdraw completely and allow the Russians to

00:46:13.740 completely take over Ukraine, which is unacceptable to me, or you have to ramp up the hardware you give

00:46:21.660 so that you can try to bring it to a speedier conclusion. Now, if you try that and it doesn't

00:46:28.400 work, then negotiation is going to be our only way of ending this. And we'll have a significant

00:46:36.420 say in that matter, given that we have treated our allies fairly and appropriately in giving them a

00:46:44.320 chance to win the war and say to them, we gave you a chance with, you know, much of what you've asked

00:46:49.420 for and you haven't been able to get it done. So we need to now step in and help to negotiate a

00:46:55.280 conclusion to this. But until we do that, we are absolutely consigning ourselves to a stalemated

00:47:06.140 situation here. So that's why I would be more aggressive.

00:47:10.240 If you acquired the presidency, what priority would addressing this conflict become? And then

00:47:19.980 also, given your strategy of sending additional military aid to Ukraine, how do you protect

00:47:28.740 yourself and your country against the possibility of getting their sleeve caught in the terrible

00:47:34.380 machine and being dragged in, you know, completely? Because there's obviously, well, you can see the

00:47:41.360 complexity there. So, you know, how much of this, how much would this be a priority for your

00:47:46.140 administration? And what do you do to stop the US and the West as a whole, the rest of the world

00:47:52.600 from getting dragged into what could be a catastrophic conflict?

00:47:57.060 Let me go in reverse on your questions. The first is, my view, the way to avoid getting dragged

00:48:05.600 in is twofold. One, to make very clear that there is not a circumstance under which I would send

00:48:14.280 American soldiers or NATO soldiers to Ukraine. But secondly, to arm them sufficiently so that it

00:48:21.200 would not be necessary. It is inaction, it is timidity that gets that sleeve caught into the machine of war

00:48:31.700 and gets you dragged in. Not the aggression of saying, we're going to give you, Ukraine, every resource

00:48:41.840 you need, from a hardware perspective, to prosecute the war you think can be winnable, short of forces.

00:48:55.200 Now, on the flip side of that, you know, as in terms of priorities, it would be a top three priority

00:49:06.320 from a foreign policy perspective. You know, the first priority is our relationship with China.

00:49:12.680 Now, obviously, that's interwoven with Ukraine. But we have many other issues that we need to deal

00:49:20.000 with with China, in terms of intellectual property, in terms of our relationship with Taiwan, in terms of

00:49:28.140 our need to make sure that the Chinese are not sowing discontent around the world.

00:49:36.520 Climate issues with China. There's a lot of issues that we have with China that we have to deal with.

00:49:42.220 That would be a top three priority. Secondly, I would also be looking to shore up our other

00:49:48.840 alliances around the world as one of the parts of dealing with our Chinese relationship.

00:49:54.660 We should have a better relationship with India, and we should be working on that. We should make sure

00:49:59.860 inside our own hemisphere that we are dealing with some of the challenges that go on that don't only

00:50:04.860 affect us internationally, but domestically. We live in the best neighborhood in the world, Jordan,

00:50:10.120 with Mexico and Canada on our borders. But we need to strengthen that both economically and

00:50:17.020 geopolitically to make sure that we deal with some of the issues that we have inside our own hemisphere.

00:50:22.300 So it would be a top three priority, along with strengthening alliances and dealing very directly

00:50:29.100 with China on the issues that are very, very important to us and to the Chinese going forward.

00:50:35.480 You know, they're the second largest economy in the world. We've become very interwoven,

00:50:41.540 and we need to acknowledge that fact and work in our own national interest to make sure that the

00:50:48.280 terms of that relationship are ones that give us the opportunity to be as successful as we can be.

00:50:56.180 So let's turn. We are somewhat tight for time here. So let's turn our attention. I'd like to talk to you

00:51:03.060 about law and order and about dialogue between Republicans and Democrats. Maybe we'll leave that

00:51:07.720 aside for a moment, though, and concentrate more on the Republican side of the race for the moment.

00:51:16.360 So as far as I can tell, the frontrunners are Trump, obviously, and then DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Haley,

00:51:27.980 you and Tim Scott. You guys look like you're all possible genuine contenders. Maybe somebody else will

00:51:35.240 pop up as we move forward. The polls I looked at indicate that Trump's running at about 48 to 50 percent,

00:51:44.560 DeSantis, 12 to 16. Ramaswamy, he varies a lot, say, between 6 and 12. You, Pence, and Scott,

00:51:53.160 somewhere between 3 and 7, and Nikki Haley at about 2 to 4. Now, there's a lot of variability in the

00:51:59.960 polls, and I don't know how accurate those figures are, but you can kind of identify maybe who's going

00:52:06.400 to be part of the actual slate. Now, you were quite close with Trump. You helped organize his

00:52:14.500 campaigns. You headed the contingent that established his presidency to begin with.

00:52:21.380 My understanding is that you became particularly skeptical of Trump as a consequence of his

00:52:27.940 failure to fully accept the results of the 2020 election. So let's delve into the Trump issue a

00:52:35.680 little bit. I think that's the right place to go next, and then talk about the other Republican

00:52:39.760 contenders. Then I'd like to shift our attention, if we can, to the Biden scandal and the Biden

00:52:46.440 presidency in general. It'd be a shame not to hit that. So maybe we could take about seven minutes to

00:52:51.680 address the Trump issue. I want to ask this question. You know, Trump has been pushing this notion that the

00:53:00.440 election was stolen, and when I talk to my Democrat informants, they tell me that the evidence for that

00:53:07.340 from a legal perspective is nil, and it's very difficult for me to evaluate that. But then I look

00:53:13.360 at it from a broader perspective, and I think this is where Trump is a genius, and he's put his finger

00:53:18.980 on something, which is that there were a lot of terrible shenanigans on the Democrat side of the

00:53:26.640 universe during the last election. And I think the worst of those was the squelching of the Hunter

00:53:32.120 Biden laptop story. That was really, to call that appalling is to barely say anything at all, because

00:53:38.940 that laptop's quite the damn mess, and God only knows what the Bidens have been up to. And that story

00:53:45.040 was squelched very conveniently in relationship to timing of the election, which was a very tight

00:53:51.920 election. So Trump might be wrong that the election was stolen in a legal sense, but that doesn't mean

00:53:57.800 he's wrong about it being stolen in a moral sense. And so, well, so that's complicated, and you worked

00:54:04.440 very closely with Trump, and so I'd be more than happy to hear whatever you have to say on in relationship

00:54:10.860 to those questions. Well, look, I was saying at the time that the Hunter Biden laptop should have

00:54:17.140 been a story. But you know what, Jordan, there are unfair things perpetuated by the media against

00:54:26.460 Republican candidates all the time. And we do have a media bias in our country. There is a liberal media

00:54:34.000 bias. There's no question about that. And the problem, though, is when you're a Republican, you've got to

00:54:40.640 be tough enough to deal with it and not be a whining child. And my problem with Donald Trump is, now all of a

00:54:48.760 sudden the problem is, well, because they suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop I lost, how about the fact that

00:54:53.420 you monumentally botched certain elements of our response to COVID? How about the fact that your conduct while

00:55:03.740 you were in office absolutely poisoned the well with millions of suburban women in this country who had

00:55:12.240 voted for him in 2016 and found him to be an absolutely unacceptable alternative in 2020? I mean, you know, much

00:55:21.420 of what we're talking about here was self-inflicted. And having been as close to him as I've been over all

00:55:27.740 these years, I can tell you that there were many of us who were telling him that while he was in the

00:55:32.820 midst of doing it. But he doesn't listen, Jordan. He doesn't take advice well. He is incredibly

00:55:40.780 self-consumed and stubborn. And, you know, much of what happened to him in 2020 could have been avoided

00:55:48.460 if he had listened to lots of good advice which was available to him and was being given to him and he

00:55:54.260 refused to accept it. And he has morphed this into, if his argument was the campaign was unfair, that's an argument

00:56:05.180 that I think a lot of us could buy into. But he doesn't say that. I mean, if you look at a recent interview we had

00:56:11.920 on Fox News with Brett Baer, and Brett asked him about those suburban women that he lost in 2020. And if he were the

00:56:17.840 nominee, how would he get him back in 2024? His response was, I didn't lose in 2020. So I don't know what

00:56:25.480 you're talking about. So what do you think he did to lose those women? His conduct, Jordan, his

00:56:33.940 abrasiveness, his failures on the COVID front, and his failures to keep his promises. Look, this is a guy

00:56:43.580 who said he was going to repeal and replace Obamacare. He had a Republican Congress. He didn't

00:56:47.740 get it done. This is a guy who said he was going to balance the budget in four years. As preposterous

00:56:52.700 as that promise was, he still did much worse. He added $6 trillion to the national debt in four

00:57:00.460 years, the worst fiscal record in four years of any president in American history. He said he was going

00:57:05.120 to build a wall across the entire border of Mexico and the United States, and that Mexico was going to pay

00:57:09.560 for it. And instead, he built 52 miles of new wall in four years, and we haven't gotten our first peso

00:57:16.220 from Mexico. He said he was going to drain the swamp, Jordan, and instead all he did was rearrange the

00:57:22.720 swamp and make room for his own family. Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka, six months after he leaves

00:57:29.960 the White House, gets $2 billion from the Saudis after he made Jared a central part of negotiations

00:57:37.860 in the Middle East when he had two very capable secretaries of state in Rex Tillerson and Mike

00:57:44.200 Pompeo. Why was he doing that? It's all part of the grift, the grift that allows him to spend $40

00:57:50.620 million of his own money that he raised from middle-class donors who thought they were donating

00:57:56.860 to him to help him get reelected president on legal fees as a billionaire. He's not spending his own

00:58:03.720 money, he's spending $100 donors' money. So I think all of those things became apparent during his time,

00:58:11.060 and a lot of suburban women just said, sorry, we gave you the benefit of the doubt in 2016 because we didn't

00:58:16.420 like Hillary Clinton, and we thought you might actually drain the swamp and do the things you said, but you

00:58:21.960 didn't do them. And in the process of not doing them, you also offended us in the way you conducted

00:58:27.020 yourself as president on a personal level, and so they left. And I don't think any of that will change

00:58:33.860 Jordan in 2024 if he's the nominee, because all he's doing is talking about the past. You don't hear him

00:58:40.500 talking about the future. All he's doing is he's still litigating the 2020 race. He does that in 2024, which

00:58:46.460 is what he's been doing so far. Joe Biden will get reelected, and that will be a calamity for this country

00:58:53.220 to have an incapable 82-year-old president going to 86 with a completely incompetent vice president.

00:59:03.780 Okay, so let's turn. I'd like to dwell on Trump a bit more, especially in relation to the Abraham

00:59:08.960 Accords, but I think instead we'll turn our attention to Biden. And so Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted

00:59:16.840 out a few days ago something I thought was extremely ominous, which was his suspicions

00:59:21.960 that the question of whether or not we're tangled up in the Ukraine war as a consequence of the

00:59:30.580 Biden family's financial dealings has now been laid on the table. And as far as I can tell, there's been

00:59:36.820 a pretty stunning series of revelations emerging out of the investigation into the Biden family that

00:59:44.160 they have taken substantial amounts of money under the protection of a multitude of different corporate entities

00:59:54.120 from foreign actors in Ukraine and elsewhere. Something approximating $20 million is the story at the moment.

01:00:03.760 And this is, it's so shocking to me to see this unfold that it's simpler for me to believe that this is mostly

01:00:13.820 mud-throwing and muckraking on the Republican side. Now, I don't believe that it is, but I can certainly

01:00:19.620 understand how it would be reassuring for people to believe that this is all smoke and no fire.

01:00:27.580 Now, if Biden himself has been tangled up in the Biden family business dealings, which seems to

01:00:33.900 me highly probable, given that I can't understand what other value Hunter Biden himself would bring

01:00:38.700 to the table, then we have a scandal of a proportion in the White House that should make what's happening

01:00:46.680 to Trump look like a sideshow, and yet that isn't happening. And so how are you reading these

01:00:52.400 revelations about the Biden family financial dealings with foreign, particularly with foreign

01:00:59.120 actors? And what do you think it entails? Both of these families need to go, Jordan.

01:01:05.860 Both the Trump family and the Biden family, who have placed themselves and their own personal

01:01:10.740 pecuniary interests ahead of the interests of the country. You know, look, $2 billion to Jared Kushner

01:01:18.740 for what exactly? His extraordinary investment acumen? You know, you could ask the same questions

01:01:26.940 about Hunter Biden. What value is he bringing to the table, except for his relationship to his

01:01:32.480 father? Now, I do think the Vivek stuff about that's why we're involved in Ukraine is laughable.

01:01:39.380 We were involved in Ukraine well before Joe Biden never got to the White House. Donald Trump was

01:01:44.860 sending weapons to the Ukrainians. I don't think anybody thinks that that was based upon some

01:01:49.740 pecuniary interest Donald Trump had. And our European allies are involved in this as well.

01:01:55.620 So I think this is Vivek just being him and throwing that out there. The same way he threw out that,

01:02:03.000 you know, he doesn't think we know everything about 9-11, and the government hasn't told us

01:02:07.640 everything. And then he had to backtrack significantly off of that post that he put up,

01:02:11.860 with one of the longest posts I've ever seen, trying to explain away an irresponsible comment.

01:02:17.620 Let's get to the real point here. Both the Trump family and the Biden family have put their own

01:02:23.400 pecuniary interests of their own families ahead of the interests of this country.

01:02:29.240 And for Hunter Biden to have access to getting his father while he was vice president of the United

01:02:34.620 States on the phone with these business folks, that's what he was selling. It wasn't the illusion

01:02:41.200 of access, as some of the Democrats say. It was access. He got him on the phone to talk to these

01:02:47.340 clients. And as a result, these clients paid him significant amounts of money. Now, whether the

01:02:52.060 president, now President Biden, got some of that money or not, I think we should continue to

01:02:57.460 investigate and find out. But my point to you is that when you've got Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancé

01:03:06.460 getting paid $60,000 in campaign money to give a three-minute speech on January 6th, when you have

01:03:13.460 campaign money donated by regular Americans paying $108,000 for Melania Trump's stylist,

01:03:20.620 when you've got them paying $250,000 to refurbish his plane, there is examples of grift in both of

01:03:30.240 these families that are breathtaking. And every bit of it should be investigated. That's why I was

01:03:36.920 calling for a special counsel quite some time ago to investigate the entire Biden issue. I'm very

01:03:42.840 disappointed that they appointed the guy who was obviously either completely incompetent or in the

01:03:48.560 tank on the Hunter Biden plea so badly that a judge rejected the plea. But we should be investigating

01:03:55.420 the Biden situation just as aggressively as we're investigating the Trump situation. And I'm tired

01:04:02.260 of the whataboutism. It doesn't make Trump's stuff not troubling. His stuff is just as troubling as Biden's

01:04:11.180 stuff. They both need to be looked at. And my view is that both of these families are past their

01:04:16.920 sell-by date for leadership in this country. And we need to move on from both Trump and Biden. And by

01:04:23.900 the way, 75% of the American people agree with that. They don't want a Trump-Biden race in November

01:04:28.660 24. So the Biden stuff is serious. And it needs to be examined in every way, including whether the

01:04:37.560 president, while he was vice president or during the period he was a private citizen, was profiting from

01:04:45.320 what Hunter Biden was up to. I know that when you were governor, I've been thinking here while you're

01:04:52.580 talking about, you know, why you might be credible on the anti-family dynasty side of things, let's say.

01:05:01.860 And, you know, I don't know any details about your own family and about whether or not you might be

01:05:07.240 someone less amenable to that kind of pressure. But I do know that you ran what appeared to be a

01:05:14.280 pretty effective anti-corruption campaign when you were attorney in New Jersey. And so maybe you could

01:05:21.100 tell people a little bit about that. And then if you have anything to say in closing to sum everything

01:05:29.200 up that we've been talking about and to, you know, what, put in a final word to the people who are

01:05:34.700 watching and listening, we're going to switch over to the Daily Wire side for another half an hour for

01:05:39.880 everyone watching and listening, just so you know, talk about some of Mr. Christie's autobiographical

01:05:47.520 history, get to know him a little bit better. But we're going to close this one up relatively quickly.

01:05:52.680 So what did you do on the anti-corruption front in New Jersey? What did that teach you about conducting

01:05:58.380 such investigations? And what do you, and then what do you have to say in conclusion?

01:06:04.000 Well, thanks for bringing that up. Look, I'm the only person who's going to be standing on that

01:06:07.940 stage who's had any experience dealing with law and order and dealing with the issue in particular

01:06:13.740 political corruption. It was a huge problem in New Jersey when I became U.S. attorney there in 2002,

01:06:19.320 and I dedicated a significant amount of resources to it. And what were the results?

01:06:23.340 We brought 130 in seven years, 130 prosecutions for political corruption against both Republicans

01:06:33.420 and Democrats. And the results, Jordan, we were 130 and 0. We did not lose one case. Not one case was

01:06:43.360 dismissed. And the reason for that goes to my overall philosophy on this. You approach these problems

01:06:50.920 without fear, favor, or partisanship. You can't fear how big the person is that's being examined.

01:06:58.560 You can't favor someone because they're powerful or rich. And you cannot ever allow partisanship get

01:07:05.400 into the middle of it. Corruption is corruption no matter who is performing it. I remember the first

01:07:10.700 case I did involved the front runner for United States Senate on the Republican side in New Jersey in

01:07:17.740 2002, and a Republican official called a friend of mine when I brought the case and said,

01:07:24.880 what the hell is he doing? I thought he was one of us. And my old law partner said to him, you don't

01:07:31.240 understand, Chris. He's not one of us. He's going to do what he thinks is right. And I think what it taught

01:07:38.320 me was that the only way to make law and order efforts in this regard seem fair and just is for

01:07:47.060 them to be fair and just and complete without fear, favor, or partisanship. So if I became president,

01:07:52.720 Jordan, I'm going to appoint an attorney general with two instructions. One, pursue every matter that's

01:07:59.640 appropriate to pursue without fear, favor, or partisanship. And two, don't come and ask me

01:08:05.900 anything about any criminal investigation that you're doing. The president has no business being

01:08:12.780 involved in it. And when I was governor, by the way, even though I had lots of opinions about what

01:08:17.560 my attorneys general were doing or not doing, they'll all tell you publicly that I never once

01:08:23.320 picked up the phone, nor did anyone on my behalf call and ask them anything or urge them to do or not do

01:08:28.800 anything in a criminal investigation. That's the only way the public can have faith in it. In the end,

01:08:34.400 I think what we need as a president is someone who actually knows how to get things done, who actually

01:08:40.660 has a record of being able to work with both sides and accomplish things, who is unafraid to use the

01:08:47.920 bully pulpit in a way that is appropriate to move opinion both of the people that you represent and of

01:08:54.400 their representatives to try to get things done. And someone who believes that it's harder to hate up

01:09:01.340 close and that what we all need to do is to work together to try to get things accomplished in this

01:09:07.040 country. Our country was set up, Jordan, constitutionally, as you know, to be an argument.

01:09:12.660 That's fine. As long as the argument leads to a result. Right now, we're living in a world of small

01:09:18.780 arguments about things that are just meant to inflame and divide. My presidency is going to be

01:09:24.240 about big things of consequence to make our country better 50 years from now, not five minutes from now

01:09:32.040 in the next news cycle. Well, sir, that seems like a good place to close. I'm going to flip to the

01:09:39.920 Daily Wire Plus side of the interview now for everyone watching and listening. So you can join us on the

01:09:45.100 Daily Wire Plus platform if you would. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.

01:09:50.320 If you're inclined, you know, a few months down the road, four months, five months, six months down the

01:09:55.040 road when you're more in the midst of the presidential campaign and there'll be all sorts of new things to

01:10:00.720 discuss, I'd be more than happy to talk to you again. We can see how this goes and how people

01:10:05.820 respond to it. But that offer is open. I'm very curious. This is going to be a remarkably dramatic and

01:10:12.320 interesting presidential election. I think we haven't seen the likes of this in our lifetimes.

01:10:17.500 You and I were about the same age and so it's going to be something to see it unfold. Thank you very

01:10:21.740 much for talking to me today and for sharing your thoughts with my viewers and my listeners. And

01:10:28.040 thanks to all of you who are in fact watching and listening. Your attention is much appreciated.

01:10:33.880 Thanks to the Daily Wire folks for making this possible as they always do and for making it

01:10:38.260 work out so professionally and easily. And on to the Daily Wire Plus side. Very nice to

01:10:44.360 talk to you, sir. Thank you. Looking forward to it, Jordan.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - September 14, 2023

383. Education, Foreign Policy, Crime, and Collegiality： the Chris Christie plan

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