After a weeklong stay in a hospital icu due to COVID according to Christie says he was wrong not to wear mask in White House - Chris Christie

Well, look, I do agree predominantly with what Governor DeSantis just laid out. I think that if you asked every one of us up here that we would agree predominantly with what he just laid out. Here is the difference. The difference is that we're going to have to work and make sure that we sell these ideas. And we able -- be able to put ourselves in a position where we get a majority of the vote, not only by winning the Congress and the Senate in '24, but also by having someone who has had the experience of doing it. Now I was elected as a conservative Republican in a blue state with 61 percent of the vote, with a Democratic legislature against me the entire time. And we still, through hard, strong decision-making, brought them around to our point of view. We cut taxes in New Jersey. We cut debt in New Jersey. We made sure that each and every time we were confronted with bad Democratic ideas we stood and stopped them. And when there were good ideas, we brought people together to make progress going forward. Truth and accountability are the things we need to do to fight waste. And I'd say the last thing is this, Bret. We cannot sit by any longer and allow the kind of spending that is going on in Washington. Because every dollar they spend is a dollar that these people are not allowed to spend on their children and their grandchildren. It's robbing our country and it's wrong.

All right, I'd like to answer the question you asked and not give a pre canned speech. Mike Pence stood for the Constitution. And he deserves not grudging credit. He deserves our thanks as Americans for putting his oath of office and the Constitution of the United States before personal political and unfair pressure. And the argument that we need to have in this party, before we can move on to the issues that Ron talked about, is we have to dispense with the person who said that we need to suspend the Constitution to put forward his political career. Mike Pence said no, and he deserves credit for it. OK.

Look, everybody on this stage wants to be the next president of the United States. And the only way that's going to happen is if we beat Joe Biden. I'm the only one on this stage who has every beaten a Democratic incumbent in an election. I did it in a deep blue state being outspent three to one. Beating a Democratic incumbent is not easy. The last Democratic incumbent president who was defeated was Jimmy Carter. And he was defeated by a conservative governor from a blue state who knew how to get results, who stood for the truth, who cared about accountability, and stood strong and hard against waste. Those are the very things that I did in my eight years as governor of New Jersey. And it's exactly what I'll do as president of the United States. Believe me, the Democrats want some other nominee who has never beaten a Democratic incumbent. I'm the one who can win this race. And if you give me the chance, I will restore our country by winning it.