Waah! Beach bum rap hurt my kids: Chris

NEW JERSEY Gov. Chris Christie said the recent “Beachgate” fiasco, which sparked countless internet memes mocking him, “upset” his children more than anything else during his scandaltarnished tenure.

“They were more hurt by this latest episode than they’ve been hurt by anything else that has happened in the eight years, and they don’t understand people’s unfairness and, quite frankly, their ignorance,” Christie said Thursday night during a call-in appearance on NJ 101.5 FM.

The Republican, whose approval polls plummeted after the Bridgegate scandal and last year’s failed presidential run, has defended his decision to go to Island Beach State Park, home of the governor’s beach house, on July 4 weekend during a government shutdown.

The backlash began when an NJ.com photographer captured Christie, his family and friends (photo above) alone on a 10-mile beach closed to the public because of the shutdown.

An image of a shorts-clad Christie sitting in a beach chair was superimposed into countless historic images, such as the first moon landing, “The Sopranos” and “Gilligan’s Island.”

Christie’s four children, in their teens and early 20s, “blamed themselves” for the incident,” he said.

“They came to me and said, ‘It’s our fault, we should have just told you that we would have just told all of our friends to go away,’ ” Christie said.

“And I said to them, no, this was my decision.”