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Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson. Born to a Sicilian mother and an Irish father, Christopher James Christie, earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware and his JD from Seton Hall University School of Law.

He served as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008 and as Governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018.

Governor Christie ran for President briefly in 2018 during the Trump administration. He served as an advisor to President Trump in a number of capacities overseeing the transition at the beginning of the Trump years and then overseeing President Trump's preparation for debates with then former Vice President Biden at the end of the Trump administration.

Today, well, we'll see what Chris Christie is up to. Governor, thanks for joining us.

Peter, thanks for having me.

I want to come to policy, first question politics and then the Republican Party, it's the question.

There is a view in the GOP that if former President Trump decides to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, every other perspective candidate should just sit it out.

If President Trump wins the nomination, they will have lost. If he loses the nomination, whoever does win it, will find himself losing on election day because the former President will peel away a third or more of the Republican base.

So for any candidate other than Donald Trump himself, it's lose, lose.

I'm going to stipulate that you have not decided what you want to do yourself, but does that argument?

If Donald Trump comes in, everybody back away. Does that argument make sense to you?

No, it doesn't. And I think anybody who tries to read what the political atmosphere will be in 2023 in 2021 is making a huge mistake.

And the best example I can give you that is who in 2014, in 2013, Peter was saying, oh, well, if Donald Trump were to run for the Republican nomination, he definitely win.

I mean, you can't read these things that early. And I think the decision to run for president, having done it once already in 2016, the decision to run for president is an intensely personal one.

And one that you need to decide based upon whether you believe you have something unique to offer the country, not on whose running.

And I think people who make those type of political calculus when making those decisions unworthy of the position.

You think it would be better for the Republican party and better for the country if the next nomination fight were a real fight?

Oh, sure. I think we're always better off when we have a real fight.

Because it airs out the issues, it makes the candidate who ultimately emerges stronger and better than they would have been otherwise and hones the arguments for the fall campaign against the Democrats.

So I think having a strong vigorous primary, I'm not talking about, I would love to have it be a lot smaller than the 17 people that we had in 2016, because then it's hard to have anyone's voice be heard.

But I do think that a strong vigorous debate about these issues within our own party will help to make us better adversaries for the Democrats in 2024.

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