New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday lauded conservative activist James O’Keefe’s video, that showed teachers railing on the governor and bragging about the benefits of tenure at a teachers’ union conference, for demonstrating what he has been saying about New Jersey teachers’ unions for a long time.
“This is what I’ve been talking about,” Christie said. “This is another exhibit as to what I’ve been talking about. The arrogance, the greed, the self-interest, the lack of introspection, the lack of standards. And it hurts the great teachers just as much as it hurts the kids.”
WATCH: Chris Christie commenting on O’Keefe video
| Gov. Chris Christie comments on ‘teachers unions gone wild’ |
O’Keefe’s video, released Monday, also shows a teacher bragging about how she gets to play video games at the conference “on their dime,” referring to taxpayers, something Christie denounced.
Christie, however, said he didn’t care that the chant the video shows the teachers attending the conference singing about him was “not very nice way.”
“I’m the Governor of New Jersey. There are gonna be people who say bad things about me every day,” Christie said. “That’s fine, I don’t care, I really don’t. This video is not about the things they say about me, this video is about the things they say about themselves. About themselves. And if you need an example of what I’ve been talking about for the last nine months about how the teachers’ union leadership is out of touch with the people and out of control, go watch this video. It’s enlightening, it’s enraging.”
The chanting Christie referenced included the teachers singing, “Let’s have a whiskey and get a little misty. Join me now and slander Chris Christie!,” as well as “Read, write and arithmetic. Here comes Christie with a whipping stick!”
Christie wouldn’t say the things a teacher said on the video teachers would have to do in order to lose tenure because, he said, there were children in the audience. He was referring to a comment Alissa Ploshnick appears to have said in the video — that a tenured teacher would have to be “in the hallway fucking somebody” to lose tenure and get fired.