Governor scorched after trip to beach
TRENTON, New Jersey — There’s Gov. Chris Christie, lounging in a beach chair in the Oval Office. There he is again, sitting in the sand as the lovers from the movie From Here to Eternity roll around in the surf. And there he is, relaxing outside the meat store from The Sopranos.
Christie is getting blistered online and in the real world after he was photographed with his family soaking up the sun on a beach that he had closed to the public over the Fourth of July weekend because of a government shutdown that was finally resolved Monday night.
Christie, a deeply unpopular Republican serving out his final six months in office, was lambasted Monday as selfish and arrogant, and jokesters online inserted the picture of him in sandals, shorts and a T-shirt into various photos and movie and TV scenes.
“Tell Gov. Christie: Get the hell off Island Beach State Park,” read a banner carried by a plane flying up and down the New Jersey coast Monday, mocking the time the tough-talking governor told people to “get the hell off the beach” during a hurricane in 2011.
New Jersey state beaches and parks were shut down over the weekend along with motor-vehicle offices and other services deemed non-essential after Christie and the Democratic-controlled legislature failed to agree on a budget for the new fiscal year that began Saturday.
They reached an agreement on a $34.7-billion US budget Monday night, and Christie said he would have the parks and beaches open today for U.S. Independence Day.
Christie defended his visit to the shore while the public was denied access, saying that he had previously announced his plans to vacation at the state-owned governor’s beach house and that the media had simply “caught a politician keeping his word.”
“That’s the way it goes,” Christie said Saturday about his family’s use of the beach house. “Run for governor, and you can have the residence.”
Later, after he was photographed on the beach, he sarcastically called it a “great bit of journalism.”
Christie’s picture was snapped from a plane Sunday at Island Beach State Park, where he and his family had the sun and sand to themselves.
“I didn’t get any sun today,” Christie said at a news conference later in the day in Trenton.
Then, when told of the photos, his spokesman said he was telling the truth because he was wearing a baseball hat during his 45-minute visit to the beach.
Online, people cracked jokes about the sight of the heavyset Christie in a beach chair. Others likened the beach closing to the 2013 scheme by Christie allies to close lanes and cause huge traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge.
Christie’s approval rating is already at an abysmal 15 per cent, after three aides were convicted or pleaded guilty in the bridge scandal and after he threw his support to Donald Trump when his own presidential campaign fizzled.
He was passed over for vicepresident and apparently didn’t get the high-level job in Washington that he wanted, but he has been mentioned as a possible late addition to the Trump administration.
Christie regularly says that the only time popularity counts is when you’re running for something — and he’s not.