Following up on their exclusive story about Charles Koch reportedly comparing to President Barack Obama to Saddam Hussein, The BRAD BLOG and Mother Jones released audio Wednesday of David Koch praising New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).

“It is a real privilege for me to be asked to say a few words on behalf of Governor Chris Christie,” Koch said in his introduction of Christie during a secret June seminar for million-dollar donors. “Five months ago we met in my New York City office and spoke – just the two of us – for about two hours on his objectives and successes in correcting many of the most serious problems of the New Jersey state government. At the end of our conversation I said to myself, ‘I’m really impressed and inspired by this man.’ He is my kind of guy.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Christie began his remarks by saying Obama had “failed the test of leadership” but quickly moved on to attacking teacher unions.

“There’s nobody in this room who runs a successful business who says, tells an employee after three years and a day — I’m sure this doesn’t happen at Koch Industries — where they call ’em in after three years and a day and say, ‘Hey, you have been great for three years and a day, and guess what? You have a job here at Koch Industries for the rest of your life. Congratulations!’ Christie said.

“But this is the way we’re running our schools. We need to get rid of tenure… It’s just not right. And so we need to do these things and that’s where we head next. We’ve taken care of the first two big of the big things, at least for the moment, and now the third big thing is we need to take on the teachers’ union once and for all and we need to decide, who is determining our children’s future? Who is running this place? Them or us? I say it’s us, and we’ve got to go fight to do it now.”

This audio is from The Brad Blog, recorded June 26, 2011.

ADVERTISEMENT

Download MP3 audio file