Gov. Chris Christie spent the day in Washington, the only state official among 16 federal and international speakers at a conference on North American trade. And even though he softened his blistering criticism of President Obama, he took his shots honing both his foreign policy creds and his presidential prospects.
It was the Americas Society/Council of the Americas forum. He was actually interviewed by President and CEO Susan Segal and took some audience questions. It lasted a little over a half hour and the governor touched on some issues of interest to New Jersey residents, starting with immigration, an issue on which he’s been critical of the president in the past, but otherwise today not very specific.
“I think we need to define first what is the real circumstance that we’re in as a country, what are we willing to engage in and what are we simply just unable to deal with? And remember the motivation of most of these folks who have come, which is they come here for a greater economic opportunity to try to support not only themselves but their families. So all of that has to be considered in the greater picture of also saying as a country, we need to make sure that we have borders that respect our sovereignty,” Christie said.
Cuba came up, of course. President Obama has been working to normalize relations with the Castro regime, and that’s something that the governor has talked about before and been critical about. Today he was — again — adamant about one key issue.
“If Cuba’s taken off the terrorist watch list, if Cuba wants to have normalized relations, then at a minimum we should stop harboring terrorists. JoAnne Chesimard is on the FBI’s top 10 domestic terrorist watch list. How do we engage in these kind of conversations with Cuba if in fact they are harboring people who our own FBI has on the top 10 domestic terrorist watch list?” Christie asked. “So I have a problem with Cuba being welcomed back into the family of civilizations. You have to be civilized. And harboring a cop killer is not civilized conduct.”
The governor called North America a pretty good neighborhood with Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, but he said like any good neighborhood it’s important to stay in touch with your neighbors, which he said the current administration has failed to do.
“We shouldn’t be in the business as the United States of just calling our neighbors when we need something. And we shouldn’t be in the business, quite frankly, of denying our friends reasonable accommodations when they ask for them. And that’s why I think the decision on Keystone was so misguided. It is not the act of a friend to deny reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are asked for. And Canada has shown over the period of recent history, they have made very difficult political and governmental decisions to support actions by the United States,” Christie said.
So it wasn’t a comfy, town hall style event but the audience was friendly and respectful and for Christie with no major faux pas, not a bad day in D.C.