Republican Rescue

Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden

Chris Christie

• Publisher: Threshold Editions
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781982187538
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Conservatisme et libéralisme

Enough with the infighting, the truth-denying, the wild conspiracy claims, the looking backward, and the refusal to focus on the dangerous Biden agenda. Here's Chris Christie's urgent guide for recapturing Republican glory and winning elections again, told with all the New Jersey frankness and news-breaking insights that have made the two-term governor and presidential candidate an indispensable voice and instant New York Times bestselling author. As governor of New Jersey and a key Trump insider and longtime friend, Chris Christie has always been known for speaking his mind. Now that the depressing 2020 election is finally behind us, he shares his bold insights on how a battered Republican Party can soar into the future and start winning big elections again.The wrong answers are everywhere. Dangerous conspiracy theorists. A tired establishment. Truth deniers and political cowards. In Republican Rescue, Christie reveals exactly how absurd grievances and self-inflicted wounds sabotaged Donald Trump's many successes and allowed Democrats to capture the White House, the House, and Senate in two years—a first for the GOP since the days of Herbert Hoover. In his frank and compelling voice, Christie dissects the last year of the Trump administration—which provoked nothing but conspiracy theories and infighting—and he lays out an honest and hopeful vision, explaining how Republicans can capture the future and save America from today's damaging Democratic excesses.The core Republican values of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan are as relevant now as they've ever been, Christie writes. Opportunity for all. A strong national defense. Leaders we can all be proud of. Americans in charge of their own lives. A federal government that answers to the people—not the other way around. But these Republican ideals need to be reinvigorated with fresh clarity and open arms. Christie watched in horror as some in his beloved party embraced paranoia and explained away violence. Determined to restore the party's integrity and success, he shows how to build a movement voters will flock to again, a Republicanism that's blunt, smart, conservative, potent, and perfectly suited for the 21st century.

PART I DONALD AND ME

CHAPTER 1 HELP WANTED

I got a call from Kellyanne Conway. This was early December of 2018.

“I think he’s going to get rid of General Kelly very soon,” she said, “and he’s been talking to me about asking you to be chief of staff. I don’t know if he’s going to do it or not. But you’d better start thinking about what you want to say if he does.”

Kellyanne didn’t miss much. A veteran Republican pollster, she had managed Donald Trump’s successful 2016 campaign and was now counselor to the president. She grew up Kellyanne Fitzpatrick near the Atco drag strip in South Jersey’s Camden County, playing field hockey and working eight summers on one of the area’s remaining blueberry farms. Her family, like mine, was part Irish and part Italian. Though she’d graduated from George Washington University law school and spent a couple of decades as a high-level political operative and cable-news talking head, to me she was still a plainspoken Jersey girl. She was also my best friend in the Trump White House, besides the president himself.

Trump had made no secret of his frustration with John Kelly, the retired four-star Marine general and former head of the U.S. Southern Command who’d run the White House staff for fourteen months by then. From what I’d been hearing, Trump hadn’t only been keeping Kelly in the dark on key decisions. The two men were barely speaking anymore. For his part, Kelly seemed to have concluded that the president was not up to his definition of a commander in chief. Kelly never said this in so many words, but his body language was unmistakable. The impatient eye rolls. The rocking back and forth as Trump spoke. Whatever respect had been there initially, it was long gone. The midterm elections hadn’t gone well for the Republicans. Democrats had won control of the House of Representatives with a massive 41-seat gain. Though the Republicans kept their Senate majority and actually added two seats, the high-turnout election had devolved into an angry referendum on the personality of Donald Trump. With his eyes now turning to his own reelection in two years, he was itching to shake up his cabinet and White House staff.

He’d already settled on Bill Barr to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general, which was a big disappointment to me. Ever since I’d helped Trump get elected, I’d always said that attorney general was the one job I would accept from him. He’d offered me just about every other position this side of White House chef. Secretary of labor. Secretary of homeland security. Ambassador to the Vatican. Ambassador to Italy. He figured I’d be a good fit at the Vatican since I am Catholic. He thought of me for ambassador to Italy because my mother was Italian. I don’t think the analysis went any deeper than that. Trump didn’t overanalyze choices like these.

He’d even asked if I wanted to be chairman of the Republican National Committee part-time—while I stayed on as governor of New Jersey. I’d said “no, thank you” to all of it. For me, it was attorney general or nothing, as I kept telling the president. I really wasn’t interested in anything else.

But what about chief of staff? The person who actually runs the White House, in a normal White House anyway. That might be interesting. Setting the daily agenda. Overseeing the president’s schedule and controlling access to him. Corralling the cabinet. Keeping the senior staffers from trying to kill each other. That job was especially important, I knew, in a White House as seat-of-the-pants as this one, where the president wanted to run everything himself. Reince Priebus, Trump’s first chief of staff, had failed to master the difficult managing-up part. Now General Kelly had stumbled, too.

After I got the heads-up call from Kellyanne, I heard nothing for more than a week. I was back home in New Jersey, doing what I’d been doing since I’d stopped being governor in January and had decided against moving down to Washington: building my consulting and law businesses. Trying to help my clients. Sharing my political commentary with George Stephanopoulos on ABC. Serving on boards of directors. Making real money for the first time in my life. This isn’t called “freelancing” anymore, I was told. It’s a “portfolio career,” meaning you do a lot of different things for a lot of different people who believe you still have the knowledge, the power, and the experience to get stuff done.

All was going well.

Then, on December 12, I got a call from Donald Trump’s personal secretary Molly. “The president would like to see you tomorrow evening at the residence for a conversation,” she said.

“What about?”

“He didn’t tell me,” she answered. “He just wants you to come to the White House, and the meeting will be up in the residence.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

I made a reservation for the next afternoon on the Amtrak Acela train to Washington.

Was this the follow-up to what Kellyanne was talking about? Or something totally different? With Trump, I knew it could be anything. His mind was constantly jumping from topic to topic, especially when the topics involved hiring and firing the people who reported to him. Especially the firing part. He’d think about firing someone, poll his friends for their opinions, think about not doing it, then think about doing it again—and truly, you could never really be sure how, when, or where he would land.

That was just Trump.

All I knew was what Kellyanne had told me and that I hadn’t heard another word about it since. “If I had a guess,” I said that night to my wife, Mary Pat, “I think he’s offering me chief of staff. What do you think I should do?”

Mary Pat had been through this drill with me before. As usual, she threw the decision back at me. “Do whatever you want to do,” she said, “but I’m not coming to Washington with the kids. We need to stay in New Jersey.”

We have four busy children, two boys and two girls. Our younger son, Patrick, was a senior in high school. Our younger daughter, Bridget, was a sophomore. “We can’t go anywhere,” Mary Pat said. “And this is a twenty-four-seven job. If you go, you’re gonna go down there and live on your own. Whenever you can come back and see us, you’ll come back and see us. But if I were you, I wouldn’t make a decision on the spot if he offers it. Tell him you’ve got to come back and talk to me, and we’ll figure it out.”

“Agreed,” I said.

---

Before I left home for the train station, I knew there was only one person to call.

The great James A. Baker III.

To me, Baker was the wisest of Washington wise men. He’d been secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan, secretary of state for George H. W. Bush, and chief of staff—the gold-standard chief of staff—for both presidents. No one else had Baker’s unique mix of Princeton-rugby polish, Marine Corps confidence, insider-Washington savvy, and Texas common sense—or, at age eighty-eight, his eternal aura of yes-I-really-have-seen-and-done-it-all. If anyone could help to steer me on this one, it was James Baker.

When I called his office at the Baker Botts law firm, he got right on the phone. “I need your advice,” I told him.

“Well,” he said in that laconic way of his, “if you’re calling me, that means you’re about to be offered the worst fuckin’ job in Washington.”

“I think I am,” I said.

I’m not quite sure how he knew that. I didn’t ask. I just fell back on my default assumption: Jim Baker knows everything.

He was generous with his advice. “There are some things you should demand before you agree to take the job,” he said. I grabbed a pen and a legal pad. I wrote furiously as he ticked off the things I should ask for, taking notes as carefully as I could.

Here’s what I wrote on my pad:

1. Chief of staff gets to staff the White House.

2. I get to manage the staff with the exception of Jared and Ivanka. On Jared and Ivanka, POTUS gets to determine role. Chief of staff needs to be fully informed of their activities.

3. Walk-in rights for Chief of Staff to any White House meeting—presidential or otherwise.

4. Walk-in rights for staff determined by Chief of Staff with the exception of the family of POTUS.

5. Chief of Staff controls his public appearances with assumption being Chief of Staff is a behind-the-scenes player—not a TV star.

6. Chief of Staff has representative at campaign and convention for planning and coordination purposes.

7. All disputes/disagreements between CoS and POTUS to be settled in private. No public statements of dissatisfaction or criticism.

8. Ability to go home on weekends to see Mary Pat and the children.

9. Attorney paid for by the RNC to advise me personally on various issues.

“Type it up,” Baker said. “And make him sign it. Keep it in your desk drawer. And attach to it an undated but signed resignation letter. The resignation letter should say, ‘Dear Mr. President: Due to the fact that we have not been able to keep our agreement upon which I accepted this job in the first place, I hereby tender my resignation as White House chief of staff.’ ”

That was a lot to write down, but I think I got all of it. And Baker delivered all those points right off the top of his head. And I had to take it seriously, he said.

“If he ever breaks one of the agreements he’s made on this list, detach the letter from the list, walk it in, hand it to him, and walk out. He has to know that you’re gonna do that. You can’t threaten it. You just have to do it. If you’re going to take the job, you have to be committed to doing it just that way.”

I told Baker I really appreciated his suggestions, all of which sounded wise to me. He left me with one last thought.

“Governor,” he said, “do what you think is best, and anything you ever need from me, I’m here to help. But I’ll tell you this. If you take this job, you’re the greatest American patriot since Paul Revere.”

No, no one could ever accuse James Baker of holding back.

“I hear you, Mr. Secretary,” I said. “I hear you.”

“That’s all,” he said. “That’s all, my friend.”

---

The Amtrak train was just pulling out of Trenton when my phone rang. It was Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, the president’s personal lawyer, and so much more. He and Trump had a relationship so long and complicated, it cannot possibly be summed up in a few lines. But the two of them spoke regularly. And though he often complained about Rudy, he also listened to a lot of what Rudy said.

“He’s offering you chief of staff tonight,” Rudy said to me right after hello. “I just got done talking to him. He’s offering it to you. What are you gonna do?”

“I really don’t know,” I answered.

“Okay, well, you’ve got a little time on the train to figure out what you’re going to say. But I think that’s going to be the question.”

It was Rudy’s call that wiped any lingering doubt from my mind. I hadn’t been summoned to the White House for idle conversation. Kellyanne hadn’t read too much into Trump’s latest personnel complaints. He’d called me down to Washington to talk to me about being his chief of staff. But I still didn’t know what I was going to say. I had Kellyanne’s heads-up, which I was grateful for. I had Mary Pat’s reaction, which was important to me. I had Baker’s points. I had Rudy’s clarification. What else did I need?

---

When I got to the White House gate, several dozen people were milling outside. This being December 13, the White House holiday parties were now in full swing. Afternoon parties. Evening parties. Different groups were invited to come at different times. I didn’t linger long enough to figure out whose turn this was. As soon as I came in off the sidewalk, one of the agents stopped me and steered me in a different direction. To me, that was the final confirmation of what I already knew. They don’t want me being seen here. I’m going to be offered this job.

The agent walked me into the house and up to the south side of the second floor, where the residence is, then through the Center Hall and into what is known as the Yellow Oval Room. First used as a drawing room by President John Adams, it’s had many different uses over the past two-plus centuries. It’s been a library, an office, and a family parlor. More recent presidents, including Trump, have used it for small receptions and for greeting heads of state immediately before state dinners. The southwest window has a swing-sash door to the Truman Balcony. Double doors on the west side lead to the president and First Lady’s bedrooms.

This is the innermost of inner White House sanctums—unless the president invites you to jump on his bed.

As I walked into the room, Melania stood to greet me. I hadn’t known the First Lady was going to be joining us. “He had to take a phone call,” she said. “He’ll be here in a second.”

I sat on the sofa across from her and set my briefcase down. Melania could not have been more welcoming. She and I chatted for a few minutes. My family. Her family. No business. Just a couple of old friends catching up. I’d had laryngitis and my voice still sounded scratchy. She insisted on getting me some tea with honey.

The tea arrived, and then Donald bounded in with his usual energy and volume. He was not a guy who believed in quiet entrances… anywhere.

“What’s with the briefcase?” he said to me.

“Well,” I answered, “this is a business meeting. So I’m here to do business.”

“Oh,” he said, drawing out the ohhh into a couple of syllables. “So we’ve got a briefcase? What? Are we going to take notes?”

“Yes, we are,” I said.

I’m not sure why the briefcase struck him, but clearly it did. That’s just Trump, I suppose, the Donald I’d gotten to know, instinctively commanding the room. He fixates on things. “Okay,” he said. “Well, Melania, this is a ...