Christie to Trump: Thanks but no thanks
Any perceived rift between President Trump and Chris Christie just isn’t so.
That’s according to the president’s former transition team chairman, who tells Gerry Baker on FOX Business' “WSJ at Large with Gerry Baker," Mr. Trump has asked if he wanted any of a variety of jobs in the administration.
“The president has offered me Secretary of Labor, Director of Homeland Security, Special Assistant to the President, two ambassadorships,” he says. “But those were not jobs that I wanted so I respectfully declined.”
Christie, the Governor of New Jersey for eight years and 2016 presidential candidate, was chosen by Donald Trump to lead the team that would ease the changeover from the Barack Obama administration to the new Trump White House.
But that didn’t last long.
Christie was unceremoniously bounced just days after Trump’s victory, he claims because of Jared Kushner, the husband of the president’s daughter, Ivanka.
“That’s what Steve Bannon (former White House Chief Strategist) told me when he fired me.”
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Kushner, whose father was prosecuted by Christie back when he was a U.S. attorney for New Jersey, hasn’t spoken out publicly about the Christie firing. And the former governor says he never held a grudge.
“I have nothing against the Kushner family. I did my job.”
Christie spells that all out and more in his new book, “Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics.” He says the president made several mistakes in his personnel choices, including former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, who Christie claims was the one who got Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Russia probe rolling.
“He’s succeeded in spite of some of the people around him,” Christie argues. “And that’s tribute to the president’s leadership style, persistence and his toughness.”
Christie has no doubt that President Trump will be the GOP nominee in 2020, and he believes former Vice President Joe Biden is his biggest threat to reelection.
“I think he will have the opportunity, because of his background, to go into places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and appeal to the white working class voters that were a huge part of Donald Trump’s base and we didn’t win by a lot in ’16; so if he peels off just some of those, that could put us in trouble,” according to Christie.
And while Christie is saying no to a run himself next year, he’s not ruling out getting back in the public eye sometime in the future.
“You know, I’m a young man, 56 years old, so I’m not going to take myself out of anything yet,” he says. “I’m enjoying the private sector and so are my two children remaining at home, who want to go to college and want Dad to pay for it.”
You can watch WSJ at Large with Gerry Baker every Friday night at 9:30 PM E.T. on the FOX Business Network.