E145: Presidential Candidate Chris Christie in conversation with the Besties

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
All right, everybody, welcome back to The All-In Podcast. We're very excited today to do our third deep dive, long-form discussion with presidential candidates for the 2024 election. Started with RFK, and he got a huge boost in the ratings after it was on the pod.
We had Vivek, and now Gov. Chris Christie is with us. Gov., thanks for coming.

**Chris Christie** (0:21)
My pleasure, thanks for having me, guys.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:23)
All right, so it's a little bit different here than I think some of the other news hits that you do. This is not short form, it's long form. We like to have a thoughtful discussion with the candidates, not with talking points. And I know that you're a straight shooter, so I think you'll fit right in here with the other boys. I think you're very unique amongst candidates that you've actually brought up the deficit. As we know, just two facts here, and then I'll hand it over to Friedberg for his question.
Last two administrations have run up the deficit massively. Here's a chart of our debt. Trump added almost 8 trillion. Biden's added 4 trillion.
And this is obviously an unpopular issue to bring up. As you've mentioned, bringing this up is unpopular. It doesn't get you votes, necessarily, to say we have to cut spending.
And Friedberg and I are very much, I'll speak for myself, this is my number one issue in terms of picking a candidate. Friedberg, I think you said it's your number one issue, so Friedberg, I'll hand it over to you in terms of a question for Gov. Christie. Yeah, Gov.

**David Friedberg** (1:29)
Christie, nice to see you. You and I sang on a karaoke stage together in Idaho a few years ago.
But it's nice to see that.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:36)
I do remember that.

**David Friedberg** (1:36)
Yeah. Is that a sly way of saying Idaho? I had to put that two and two together there. Everyone, nice, Friedberg. It was a small bar in Idaho.

**Chris Christie** (1:46)
Small bar in Idaho.

**David Friedberg** (1:48)
Small gathering. The establishment class has spoken. Small gathering with a few folks who happened to be in a bar together.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:53)
At the big conference that shall not be named.

**David Friedberg** (2:14)
We watched the Republican primary debate a few weeks ago.
And I think what struck me at least was how little focus and attention is given on the fiscal situation. The US government, deficit in excess of $2 trillion this year, debt to GDP in excess of 130%. 30 plus percent of US debt is coming to you in the next year, which means it's gonna get refinanced at the higher rates, at probably 5.5% plus. And then when you look at the demands on social security, Medicare forecasts are that both of those systems necessarily go bankrupt unless there's some extraordinary measures taken. And that seems to be a very kind of hot topic, golden goose that can't be touched or debated.
All of this seems to be largely ignored and so much of the conversation is around social issues in the United States, military issues, war, et cetera, when fundamentally there's no gas in the tank. I guess the point of view I'd love to hear from you is how do you think about that? Does that matter to you right now? Or do we think that this is a can that we kick down the road and we'll solve this problem later? We'll grow our way out of it? If we cut some spending, it'll fix itself? It seems so core to me that the future of the United States is gonna be dependent on how we're gonna manage this fiscal emergency that we're facing.

**Chris Christie** (3:35)
Well, look, David, it's core to me too. And I'm, you know, if you've seen any of the excerpts from any of the town hall meetings I've done so far, you know, I've been talking about both the issues you just raised.
First off, I think on the deficit and debt side, I learned about this after becoming a prosecutor and having to come to New Jersey and inherit two problems immediately. We had a $2 billion short-term deficit for the last five months of the fiscal year that I inherited. And then we had a $11 billion deficit on a $29 billion budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 of 2010 And I had to deal with both those things. And as you know, unlike the chart that was just shown, you don't get to run it up. You have to square it. And so, I learned how hard it is and how ugly it's gonna be for your popularity to do these things. So on the first piece, on the $2 billion, we sat down, I refused to raise taxes, and we sat down and we eliminated 683 individual programs, completely, and then swept every surplus from a school board in the state. And the way we did that was we reduced their state aid by the amount they had in surplus to get the $2 billion in balance.