Chris Christie puts Hillary Clinton on trial at GOP convention
Although Day 2 of the Republican convention was billed as Make America Work Again day, Tuesday brought a parade of prosecutors, from the attorney general of Arkansas, to former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was also a U.S. attorney for New Jersey. All of them put Hillary Clinton on trial before a jury of thousands of GOP delegates, with Christie as the lead attorney.
Donning the mantle of the prosecutor he once was, Christie proceeded to make his remarks a trial of Hillary Clinton, whom he noted, would not be prosecuted by the Justice Department.
He lambasted her over her tenure as secretary of state.
"Look around at the violence and danger in our world today every region of the world has been infected with her flawed judgment, Christie said. And he ticked off his list of her failures and asked the audience at the end of every charge -- "is she guilty or not guilty?"
Libya, he said, has an economy in ruins, "death and violence in the streets and ISIS now dominating the country" after "she was the chief engineer of our disastrous overthrow of Qaddafi."
He mentioned an al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria he says she kept off the terrorist watch list and drew a direct line to the Boko Haram abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls, most of whom remain missing.
"What was the solution from the Obama/Clinton team," he asked derisively. "A hashtag campaign!"
He hit her on China, Syria and then on Iran -- Christie said she led the Iran negotiations and "brought about the worst nuclear deal in history," Christie charged, making the the U.S. and the world "measurably less safe and less respected."
Next stop on his tour of Clinton wrongdoing was Russia, which brought a clever reminder of her email controversy. Recalling that Clinton brought a symbolic "reset" button on U.S.-Russia relations on her first visit, Christie opined that "the button should have read, 'delete'-- she is very good at that -- because she deleted in four years what it took 40 years to build."
At home, Christie charged that the investigation into her private email server proved Clinton -- with her "selfish, awful judgment" -- "cared more about protecting her own secrets than she did about protecting America's secrets. Then she lied about it over and over again."
In what amounted to a closing argument, Christie said of Clinton, "We cannot promote someone to Commander-in-Chief who has made the world a more violent and dangerous place with every bad judgment she has made."
"We know exactly what four years of Hillary Clinton will bring," Christie concluded, "all the failures of the Obama years, but with less charm and more lies."
Clinton had a brief, pointed response to the prosecution in a tweet.
CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett got a chance to ask Christie about Clinton's response to his case against her.
"So witty," Christie deadpanned after Garrett read him the tweet. "If Hillary Clinton wants to take me on, I'm happy to take her on every day between now and the end of the campaign -- and there won't be much of her left."