Returning to the DC appeals Court ruling against the former President, I spoke about it with former Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie. In addition to having served as US attorney for New Jersey and then governor, he's also a newly published author. His new book, Out Just Today, is What Would Reagan Do? Life Lessons from the Last Great President. I spoke to him just before air time. First of all, the reaction to the federal appeals court decision.

Look, I think it's a very tight, concise decision. I don't think there's any grounds for appeal. I don't know why the Supreme Court would want to take it. I think it's what's going to lead to is a trial later this spring in Washington.

You think the trial will actually take place before the election?

Oh, I absolutely do.

Look, a couple of things- Won't he try to delay? I mean, even if there's not grounds for an appeal, he'll- He'll try.

But when I read the decision today, one of the things the circuit court did was say if he wanted to appeal to the Supreme Court, he had until Monday to do it. Usually, it's 90 days. They gave him until Monday and said, If you don't, then we're just going to lift the stay. I think he's going to have some decisions to make regarding how he wants to proceed. I'm sure he's going to try to appeal to the Supreme Court.

You don't think they would take it up?

I don't. I think it's a very tight, narrow ruling, and I don't think that the Supreme Court would be looking to take it up on a 3-0 decision that, in fact, I think is the correct decision.

Do you have confidence that politics wouldn't influence some of the judges on the Supreme Court?

I I think the other politics that people don't think about is the small P politics of this. They already have to be involved this coming week in hearing the ballot access argument. I don't think they want to take two election related cases. I think Chief Justice Roberts has been pretty clear about that over time in some of his public speeches that in the aftermath of Bush v. Gore, he really was going to try to keep the court out of those type of disputes if he could.

Do you think any of the President's trials will actually be adjudicated before the Republican Convention?

Yes, I think at least the January sixth trial will be or could be very well. I think it could probably start beginning in May. Basically, what the trial judge has said is that she'll give them a day for every day that the case has been stayed to prep. If the Supreme Court makes this decision, let's say, whether to take the case or not, and assume they don't take it by the end of this month, which I think is likely, then that's two months. Add two months onto that March fourth date. May fourth, the trial is probably a 6-8 week trial. I think it'll be done. My guess is that he'll be a convicted felon when he gets on the stage to accept the Republican nomination for President.

You put so much time and money into New Hampshire, why did you drop out when you did it?

Because I didn't see a path to beating Donald Trump. That was my goal all along. By the time we got about two weeks out, we had been polling fairly regularly, and we just We just didn't see ourselves within striking distance of him. Because of that, I didn't want to continue on in what was going to be a really, really difficult challenge to defeat him. My view was it was the right time to do it because I'd always told my supporters that if I didn't see a path to winning, I wasn't going to go on some vanity exercise.

Was it also to help Nikki Haley or some alternative?

No, because I didn't think it would, and in fact, it didn't.

Would it have helped if you had endorsed her?

I don't know. I don't know how much endorsements really matter, quite frankly, but that wasn't really the way I made that decision.

You're still not willing to endorse her? No. Why?

Because she's not running against Donald Trump. I think that the people who support me in this enterprise expect that if I'm going to support someone, they are going to be as aggressive and honest and direct about Donald Trump being unfit for the presidency. During the time I was in the race in New Hampshire with Governor Haley, she wouldn't even say that she wouldn't accept the vice presidency from him. So that hardly seemed like someone that would be a natural fit for me.

What about the idea of a third-party run? I mean, the No Labels Group has talked about it. You haven't said no to something like that.

No. Look, what I think is that if anybody is going to pursue that, they'd have to be convinced that there was a path to 270 electoral votes. I just got out of this race about three weeks ago, so I'm not going to think about anything else except take a vacation with my wife.

Where'd you go?

We went to the keys. Okay.

So your In the book, What Would Reagan Do? What would Reagan think of the Republican Party today?

He'd be appalled. He'd be appalled at the cowardness of people not standing up to something that's so obviously wrong.

Would Reagan even win a primary?

I don't think Ronald Reagan running as the Ronald Reagan that I knew and voted for in 1980 wouldn't recognize how to even run in a primary like the one we just had. I can't imagine that Ronald Reagan would have raised his hand at the first debate, as six of the eight people did, and say, I would support Donald Trump, even if he were a convicted felon. I think Ronald Reagan, as we all saw, would have taken on Donald Trump directly.

In the book, you write, Many Republicans have abandoned their common sense and discernment and jumped into a shabby cult, denying plain reality, ignoring proven facts, promoting ridiculous conspiracy theories, and pledging allegiance to a blustry loser who can't remotely be called a conservative and who cares solely about himself. It's about as far as you can get from Ronald Reagan.

I like that. That's pretty good.

And yet this is the party you want to head.

Well, look, I mean, what I wanted to is change it. Listen, Anderson, if you took those words and you went to any number of leaders of our party, privately, and asked them if they agreed with it, they say they did. The problem is they don't want to do the hard work that's necessary to lead and change the party. It means that if you don't raise your hand at the debate in Milwaukee, you're going to get booed. You're going to be willing to do that.

When you look at the border battle that's happening now, dead on arrival, the Senate bill on the border, does that make sense to It doesn't make sense to me.

It certainly makes sense to Reagan. What Reagan would do is if there was parts of it he didn't like, he'd get in there and negotiate it and try to make it better. Then ultimately would agree on a compromise that if it didn't give him 100% of what he wanted, it would give him a lot of what he wanted, and he would move the ball down the field.

The former President, President Trump, has talked about this is not a perfect bill. Only a perfect bill is acceptable. There's really no such thing as a perfect bill.

Not in my experience of being governor for eight years in a state where I presided over a divided with the Democratic legislature. But we got a lot of really great things done during that period of time. Reagan working with Tip O'Neill saved Social Security. Reagan working with Tip O'Neill cut taxes. Reagan working with Tip O'Neill rebuilt the military. Those things can be done if you want to, but it's hard work, Anderson. Sometimes you're going to make people unhappy. My view of our race and why this book is relevant even more now is that Ronald Reagan was a guy who lost at times standing on his principles, but he's willing to stand up against Gerald Ford when he thought Ford had moved too far to the left. He was willing to stand up against the Birch Society when he thought they were too far to the right. What I tried to do in this race was to stand up for the truth. That was not extraordinarily popular with some members of my party, but it doesn't mean you stop trying.

Do you have any doubt that President Trump is pulling the strings, members of the House, to reject the border bill?

None at all. He said it publicly, so I know I have no doubt about that at all. Let's add, he's doing it purely for political reasons because he'd rather to continue to have people pour across the border and endanger our country because he thinks it will help him politically against President Biden.

Governor Christie, thank you.

Thank.