to a nearby shelter where than his woodlands were gathering. after a few minutes, more and more family started to gather around me. i didn't understand why they flocked to someone they had never met. and then it hit me, they didn't care who i was, they cared where i was from. in me, they saw america. in america, they saw hope. as republicans and as americans , it is up to us to renew that hope. our children and our grandchildren are counting on us . and together i know we will come , through for them in a way that makes everyone proud. thank you, god bless you. then god bless! america! [applause] >> ♪ isn't she lovely isn't she wonderful isn't she special ♪

less than one minute crime, infe u.s. southern border. most importantly, it's so great to have such a great crowd here and see us through this pandemic, get everybody back together, seeing each other eye to eye, speaking to each other directly and listening to each other again. thank you for taking the time to be out here. it's great to see you. [applause] a lot of things to reflect on

today. where i reflected was that our party was in a very similar position in my mind 60 years ago. 60 years ago, in 1962, you had a crossroads for the republican party. we lost the presidential election a john kennedy, we had a disappointing midterm in 1962, and we also had conflict inside the party. what was driven that time was driven by the john birch society . and for those of you who remember those times, it was a group of folks who sold themselves as if by communists, but broadened their hate miss to

lots of other groups. and began to use litmus tests based upon lies, falsehoods about members of our own party. as a litmus test for their support. and it was a dangerous time where republican politicians throughout the country were afraid, they were afraid to speak out, they were afraid to oppose these folks because what they were told was if you oppose them, you cannot win a republican primary, you cannot be a nominee, so you must either agree with them or acquiesce. acquiesce to that particular point of view. and at that time there were two people who stood up to say no.

the first one was william f buckley, the founder and editor of the national review. [applause] he called and barry goldwater, who was contemplating running for president in 1964, and they came to an agreement. buckley would speak out first forcefully against the john birch society, and then goldwater would follow up with a forceful letter to the national review supporting buckley's position. so buckley went out there and wrote a 5000 word editorial that only william f buckley junior could do, laying out the case, and i refer you to go back to it because it's exquisite language against lies in falsehoods and authoritarianism in a democracy. goldwater saw the reaction to it by some members of the party and he backed out.

he backed away from his agreement with buckley. but luckily for william f buckley and even more buckley for our party, someone else dubbed forward, ronald reagan. [applause] ronald reagan wrote a letter to the national review saying that the john birch society was not his republican party and that it could cost him the ability to run for office and reagan had not run for anything. it cost them the ability to run for office then so be it. the integrity of our party and the vibrancy of our democracy was more important to reagan than his own personal ambitions. and someone asked him, how will you do with this if you decide to run for office. would you accept the support of the john birch society question

mark i want to read this to you, it's important. he said it would be my intention if i seek public office to seek the support of individuals by persuading them of my philosophy , not accepting theirs. [applause] reagan gave a speech two years later in support of barry goldwater and called a time for choosing. it was the speech that catapulted reagan's career. two years later he became the governor of california. and of course them later, the 40th president of the united states, and in my opinion, the greatest president of my lifetime. [applause] i think we are at a time for choosing right now. we are at a time for choosing. it is not to be left up to others to decide who our party

is. it's not to be left up to anyone person to decide who our party is. it is up to us to decide who our party is, and it's not to be done and decided in the dark. it is not to be done and decided with inference drawn by you or implication for things upon other leaders in this party. we have to have this discussion out in the open. we have to have this family argument and we need to have it now. and i will tell you in a moment why i think it's so important to have it now, but i want to tell you what i choose. the kind of republican party that i choose. i choose a republican party steeped in conservativism and all of those volumes -- values and principles we stand for. strength, faith, decency,

integrity, freedom, liberty. and to make sure that we have a country that we bring together, not a country that we tear apart around those principles. there's lots of specifics that we have to be, but the last thing i would tell you is is that i'm for fighting. i am for fighting. look, this is because i grew up in a household with a sicilian mother and an irish father. a sicilian mother and an irish father in the state of new jersey. this allows you to not only see fighting is acceptable, but as an art form. so i want to be clear to all of you, you've known me now for a long time and when i find something that i'm willing to fight for, i think i fight as

hard, as tough and as good as anybody. it's about choosing what to fight for that we've got to get for now. choosing what to fight for and i will tell you what i don't want us doing. what i don't want us doing is for fighting for things that are for just one person, not for everybody. [applause] we don't want to be bending to the will of one person rather than advocating for the good of all of our people. what i have been calling this lately is the choice for the republican party between the party of me in the party of us. i fear, unfortunately, that we have been the party of me for the last five or six years. and because i'm from new jersey and from that sicilian mother who was watching from heaven, i am confident in saying -- is saying to me, christopher, get to the point. i will get to the point.

i was the first candidate who left the presidential campaign in 2016 and endorsed donald trump. i chaired donald trump's transition. i played, i want you to all think about this now, i want you just for a moment to close your eyes and picture this, please. i played hillary clinton in debate prep. if that doesn't keep you up tonight, i don't know what will. i don't want to disturb her more or you, but either one, i chaired the presidents opioid commission, and then i played joe biden in debate prep in 2020. i had to take some significant sedatives before i did, but nonetheless, i did faithfully play joe biden in debate prep. so when we are standing and forming a line about who did

what to try to make donald trump and his presidency as successful as possible, i would argue that there are a few people that stand in front of me. i was there early, i was there faithfully, and i was there all the way up until election night 2020. and the reason that i stopped on election night 2020 is because of one of those principles i talked about that we stand for, truth. listen, everybody, we have to stand for the truth and we have to stand against falsehoods. election night 2020 when i saw the president of the united states stand in the east room of the white house behind the seal of the president in 2:30 in the morning until the american people, with no evidence at all that the election had been stolen, that's where it ended for me. that's because it became the

party of me at that moment. that the pain of defeat couldn't be accepted and put the country first and for every moment since then, every moment since then, our party has been diminished by that lack of leadership. by that lack of humility. [applause] i have been saying this for a while since that night, and i know that a number of folks have said this now to all of you, but i think it bears repeating i absolutely remember the 2016 campaign vividly, the general election campaign, i was there with the president and i remember him saying, we are going to win and we are going to

do so much winning, we will keep winning and winning and winning and we will do so much winning that you asked me to please stop winning because he will get tired of winning we are winning so much. i know you remember it. but the fact of the matter is, everybody, since that night in 2016, politically, as a party, we done nothing but lose, we lost the house in 2018, we lost the senate and the white house in 2020 and two weeks ago we underperformed the historic norms in the house for a party out of power to a loose one senate seat and lost two governorships. i remember when i was first elected governor in 2009, one of my political mentors, governor haley of mississippi was chairman of the governors association and he brought me into my first meeting of all the governors. i was overwhelmed, i cannot believe i had been john in new jersey, i cannot believe i was

going into a room and sitting with the governors of our country is one of them, and barbara grabbed my arm and stop me before i walked in and said, you will be the future leader of this grouping country and i want you to remember something, organizations like this exist for one reason and one reason only, to win. we don't make policy, we don't govern, our job is to win and then leave it to the people who we elect to get the rest of the job done. don't ever forget that. i have never forgotten it, and when i was chairman of the rga in 2014, when i left that job, we had 31 republican governors around the country, today we have 26 we had a majority in the united states senate, today we are in the minority. and we had a large majority in the house of representatives. we keep losing and losing and losing and the fact of the matter is, the reason we are

losing is because donald trump has put himself before everybody else. [applause] and i understand and believe in summary of the policies that were able to be accomplished during those four years. i mourn what more could have been done, and lets member this, everything that has happened in the last two years is because we lost that election everything that has happened in this country, the runaway inflation, the loss of energy independence, the porous border. the injection of parents from our public education system, all of those things, including crime running rampant in major parts of this country are because we gave those elections away.

because we put one person ahead of the interest of the party in the country. so we have a time for choosing, everybody, and we need to have that conversation. ronald reagan had the strength to do that 60 years ago. there were some people back then who booed him and belittled him, and i'm sure that there are some people who will do the same about this message today. the remember, i got an airplane from new jersey to come here because i respect you, because i respect what you've done for our country and for our party, and because i wanted to deliver this message to you directly, right to you, that candidates matter, everybody. and not just talking about personality here. everybody could talk about personality. i heard some people don't like mine. so it's ok. i'm not talking about personality, i'm talking about candidates and how we pick candidates.

we lost in new hampshire because we did not pick a good candidate. we lost in pennsylvania and the governorship by double digits, which cost us a senate seat because we actually selected a candidate who organized buses to the u.s. capitol on january 6 and went there himself. we lost in arizona because we picked the wrong candidates. we lost in wisconsin, michigan because we picked the wrong candidates. now we, donald trump pick candidates with one criteria, only one, not electability, not experience, not wisdom, not charisma, not the ability to govern, but do you believe the 2020 election was stolen or not. if you do, i endorse you, if you don't, i reject you, that's not what this party stands for, it's not what it should stand for in the future and we have to stop it now. [applause]

because remember, go back and look at your electoral map if you are concerned about 2024 and try to get to 270 electoral votes without wisconsin and michigan in pennsylvania, i challenge you to do it, we cannot elect a republican president in 2024 unless we make a comeback in those states. we've got a remember that the base of this republican party has always been, always been, our appeal to good, smart, hard-working people in our suburbs, and we've been losing those people, and we've lost those people in these last elections, and that's why we are losing these elections. what we need to fight for? because we need to make sure we know what we are fighting for. outside you what i want to fight

for, i want to fight china, i want to fight china because of stealing from us every day, and they are not people, they are not people who understand the character, people who only understand the shtick, and we need to get to that, i want to make sure that we fight for energy independence, not only because it's right for america, not only because it's great for us, but because then we can help our allies around the world with energy as well, not having to depend on venezuela and russia, and the middle east to give them that. i want to make sure that we fight crime, i'm a former prosecutor, we are not social workers, we put dangerous people in jail and keep them there. joe biden is for regulation, i'm for innovation. i want to make sure that the innovators of this country are not regulated to death, and that we allow everyone who comes to

this country with a great idea to have the opportunity to make it a winning idea, a profitable idea that create jobs and hope and opportunity for everybody. we don't need the government trying to create jobs, we need the american people to be creating jobs and we have to do that. [applause] and let's make this clear, we have to stand with democracies all around the world, i'm proud we are standing with ukraine against the aggression with russia, and we need to continue to, and every day we need to stand with the only democracy in the middle east, with israel, and stand against the terrorism of iran all across the world. because whether you are talking about iran or those who aspire to this in our country, authoritarian dictators only want one thing, they just want

one more chance to vote the crowd one more time. in iran there's uprisings right now. we should be supporting them against that awful regime [applause] but before we can do that we have to get our own house in order. we have to have a leader for our party and for our country that can look at people around the world in the eye and say, america stands for freedom and liberty and protects democracy, we put our people first in our own personal interest second, so if we are setting that example for the world, now it's your turn, but if we are not doing it here, we can stand up to those other countries and tell them to do it, it's time for us to get our house in order. in the way we get our house in orders to stand up against the lies, stand up against the pettiness, stand up against the self interest. i want to end with this.

all of us, i'm sure in this room, have our favorite founders , i'm sure for many of you it's george washington, your choice. my old boss used to call himself the second george w. some of you love jefferson, some of you i'm sure love hamilton, especially because of the play, some of you i'm sure our fans of ben franklin. i love all those guys as well, but my favorite founder is john adams. here's the round of applause atoms, some people have said to me when i tell them this that adams is my favorite founder because he was somewhat overweight and grouchy. i want to tell you, while i think those are extraordinary qualities in an american leader,

besides the only reason i love john adams, john adams was the heartbeat of the revolution. when no one else wanted to declare independence, adam stood up on the floor of the continental congress and demanded it day after day after day. if you saw the old place 1776, there was an entire song written of everyone in the continental congress singing, for god sake, john, sit down. john adams kept getting up and saying the only passive true freedom and liberty for our colonies was independence. he stood for it and vote for it every day, ultimately became one of the country's greatest diplomats, the first -- first vice president of the united states and the second president of the united states. and when he left office and retreated back to massachusetts, he begin to write for his diary near the 50th anniversary of our

country. he wrote for posterity, he was riding in the book saying in writing this for the future americans. he was writing it for us. having no idea what we would become or hoping what we would become. and he was concerned that we were losing our way back in the early 1820's. and he wrote this for us, he said you shall never know. the sacrifices that were made to secure for you your liberty, i pray you make a good use of it for if you do not, i shall repent in heaven forever making the sacrifices at all. i want you to think about this because i think about it all the time, people asked me where you still involved in public life, why do you keep pushing, why do you keep coming, why do you keep fighting? i don't want to be the generation that adams looks down from heaven and repents for.

i don't want to be responsible for allowing the american dream of liberty, freedom and a cohesive american family who believes in those principles to be ushered off of the world stage. i don't want to be part of the republican party who stands for just one man and not for all of those principles. adams would reject it, he would repent in heaven for having sacrificed to give me the opportunity and you the opportunity to speak our minds, live or we want to live, be where we want to be if we are not willing to fight for this now. i will not be the one who allows our country to go that way, and i will not go silently to have adams repent in heaven for having made the sacrifices that he made. you are here because you believe in that country also. it is time to stop whispering, it is time to stop doing the

knowing nods but we can't talk. it's time to stop being afraid of anyone person, it's time to stand up for the principles and the beliefs that we have founded this party on in this country on . i am ready for that fight, i hope you are ready for that fight, let's go out into it together, thank you so much for having me today. [applause]