New Jersey Governor Chris Christie slapped down notions that his Tuesday RNC speech was a selfish play for a future presidential run, as CNN's Piers Morgan said he talked about himself much more than Mitt Romney.
"Oh, listen – at the end of the day, what I was doing was building the case for Mitt Romney. Do you think there's anybody here who doesn't know his name?" Christie responded. "I mean, this is really kind of silly stuff." [Video below the break.]
"But listen, I understand that folks in the media have nothing better to do but to do that kind of stuff. And they want to create controversy. I understand that, because these conventions have become kind of prepackaged shows and you all want to have something different to talk about," Christie continued.
A transcript of the segment, which aired during CNN's Republican National Convention coverage on August 29 at 9:31 a.m. EDT, is as follows:
PIERS MORGAN: But they weren't sure if you were doing it for your own future presidential race or for Mitt Romney's current presidential race.
Governor CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-N.J.): Oh I don't know how people can be confused. I laid out the case for Mitt Romney, as a former governor, that if you do the things at the state level like we've done them in New Jersey, it can be done at the national level. If you get someone who knows what they're doing – and I don't think anybody was really confused at the end of the night (Inaudible).
MORGAN: Well, the confusion came because you didn't mention his name for 17 minutes. And by the end of the speech, you had mentioned the word "I" 37 times and the word "Mitt" 7 times.
CHRIS CHRISTIE: Oh, listen – at the end of the day, what I was doing was building the case for Mitt Romney. Do you think there's anybody here who doesn't know his name? I mean, this is really kind of silly stuff. But listen, I understand that folks in the media have nothing better to do but to do that kind of stuff. And they want to create controversy. I understand that, because these conventions have become kind of prepackaged shows and you all want to have something different to talk about. But I can tell you this. If you look at the substance of the speech last night, which is what I'm most concerned about, it lays out a very clear case that we need to tell people the truth, we need to make hard choices and we need to implement that now.
