"Given my last position, that I was the first U.S attorney post 9/11 in New Jersey, I understand acutely the pain and sorrow and upset of the family members who lost loved ones that day at the hands of radical Muslim extremists. And their sensitivities and concerns have to be taken into account"
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Christie starts by staking a claim to emotional authority: not just a politician with an opinion, but the first U.S. attorney in New Jersey after 9/11, a role that places him adjacent to the wreckage, the prosecutions, the funerals, the ongoing grief. It’s a credential meant to pre-empt doubt and silence critics. If he “understand[s] acutely,” then disagreement can be framed as insensitivity, not policy dispute.
The phrasing does two jobs at once. “Radical Muslim extremists” is a carefully loaded label: narrow enough to sound precise, broad enough to keep “Muslim” in the foreground, tapping public fear while offering a disclaimer against overt bigotry. It signals toughness, yes, but also membership in a post-9/11 political consensus where Muslim identity is routinely treated as adjacent to threat, even when the word “radical” is doing the supposed limiting.
Then comes the pivot to “sensitivities and concerns.” That language borrows the register of care and trauma-informed politics, but it functions as a policy lever. By centering families’ pain as the decisive factor, Christie implies that certain civic choices (a mosque near Ground Zero, surveillance policy, immigration rhetoric, public memorial debates) must be adjudicated through grief. The subtext: rights and pluralism are negotiable when they collide with the emotional aftershocks of terror.
It’s effective because it feels compassionate while narrowing the field of permissible argument. The audience is invited to mistake empathy for analysis, and moral standing for civic principle.
The phrasing does two jobs at once. “Radical Muslim extremists” is a carefully loaded label: narrow enough to sound precise, broad enough to keep “Muslim” in the foreground, tapping public fear while offering a disclaimer against overt bigotry. It signals toughness, yes, but also membership in a post-9/11 political consensus where Muslim identity is routinely treated as adjacent to threat, even when the word “radical” is doing the supposed limiting.
Then comes the pivot to “sensitivities and concerns.” That language borrows the register of care and trauma-informed politics, but it functions as a policy lever. By centering families’ pain as the decisive factor, Christie implies that certain civic choices (a mosque near Ground Zero, surveillance policy, immigration rhetoric, public memorial debates) must be adjudicated through grief. The subtext: rights and pluralism are negotiable when they collide with the emotional aftershocks of terror.
It’s effective because it feels compassionate while narrowing the field of permissible argument. The audience is invited to mistake empathy for analysis, and moral standing for civic principle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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