Christie: Trump was surrounded by unsavory types

PHILADELPHIA — President Donald Trump is surrounded by “amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons” and also believes long ties are slimming, according to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s blistering new book.

In “Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-your-face Politics,” the ousted member of Trump’s transition team lays into the president’s associates, writing that Trump had a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals … who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia,” according to excerpts published in Axios.

Remaining relatively unscathed in the latest White House kiss-and-tell is the president himself, according to the Guardian, which also obtained text in advance of the book’s Jan. 29 release.

Christie targets Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, whom he accuses of carrying out a political “hit job” on the former New Jersey governor in retaliation for Christie’s prosecution of Kushner’s father, Charles, in 2005.

During his stint as a U.S. attorney, Christie charged the senior Kushner with Christie crimes including tax evasion and campaign-finance violations. The prosecution was behind the Trump adviser’s push for the president to sack Christie, then-white House chief strategist Steve Bannon apparently said.

“The kid’s been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here,” Bannon allegedly told Christie.

Christie also turns his wrath on Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who is awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI. Calling the former general “the Russian lackey and future federal felon,” Christie says Flynn was “a train wreck from beginning to end.”

The Guardian’s report said Christie thinks the president “trusts people he shouldn’t, including some of the people who are closest to him,” and is surrounded by “amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons.”

On a lighter note, Trump urged Christie to wear longer ties to appear slimmer.