Chris Christie 2016 "Telling It Like It Is" Video and Transcript

Chris Christie:  “I get accused a lot of times of being too blunt and too direct and saying what’s on my mind just a little bit too loudly. I have an Irish father and I had a Sicilian mother. Now, for those of you hooting, you know what that means, right? My mom was the one who set the rules and set the tone. No suffering in silence, if you’ve got a problem, tell me. She would tell us every time she had a problem, to the point where we were just like, ‘Mom, do we have to hear this?’ And she’d say, ‘Yes, I need to get it off my chest now. There will be no deathbed confessions in this family, you’re going to hear it now.’ In 2004, my mom got diagnosed with cancer. And all of you who have lost a family member to cancer, you understand what this scene is like. She grabbed my hand and she said, ‘Christopher, there’s nothing left unsaid between us.’ It was an incredibly powerful moment in my life. And that moment was created by her, her whole life. I knew she loved me. And she knew I loved her. When people wonder why I do the things I do, that moment affirmed for me, forever, that I’m going to be this way. I know if my mom were still alive, she would say to me, ‘I taught you that in a trusting relationship, you don’t hold anything back. And if you’re going to run for president of the United States and you’re going to ask these people for their vote, that is the single most trusting thing they can do as a citizen, is to give you their support. So you better tell them exactly what you’re thinking and exactly what you’re feeling.’ And when you ask about my moral compass – that’s it, that’s it.”