Regrets? Chris Christie Has a Few
In a new memoir, Chris Christie gets the last word (well, probably not) on Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner—and that Mar-a-lago meatloaf
chris christie is a man of donald trump’s ilk. Both grew up in the shadows of Manhattan dreaming of the riches that come with success and notoriety. Both are boisterous but make up for their bombast with charm. And both men always take it personally.
Their political paths diverged from there. Trump became president, while Christie, once America’s favorite bully, saw his White House ambitions engulfed in scandal over, of all things, a traffic jam (remember Bridgegate?). The two-term governor of New Jersey ended his tenure as the least popular chief executive in state history, after being fired from running Trump’s transition team.
So, perhaps unsurprisingly, Christie’s thirst for vengeance reaches Princess Bride levels in Let Me Finish, his first book, published by Hachette in late January. The book works to settle scores with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and the president’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Christie calls Bannon “the only person I have ever met who can look pretentious and like an unmade bed at the very same time.” Kushner, he writes, was a serial salad eater (this serves as an insult in Christie world).
Much worse, he says, was the time Kushner killed his vice presidential prospects. Kushner apparently told Trump that Christie, as a U.S. attorney, “tried to destroy my father” by prosecuting the elder Kushner for tax evasion and witness tampering in the early 2000s. The president’s son-in-law, Christie writes, later had Bannon fire him from the transition team. He says he believes his dismissal led to the subsequent years of disarray in the White House.
Christie says he wrote the book to show everyday Americans how to overcome serious lows. He spoke with Newsweek about the president, the Boss (Christie is a fanatical Bruce Springsteen fan) and keeping the door open to another White House bid.
Why did you write Let Me Finish now? Bridgegate happened. I ran for president. I endorsed Donald Trump for president. And now I’ve been involved in being an adviser to him over the last two years. So it was screaming out to me that there were more and more reasons to write a book, and I wanted to tell people the truth about how I see things, because I think that’s what they expect from me. This book is about me saying, “I have run, and I know what life can dish at you.”
“I told the president from the start: I only want two jobs, vice president or attorney general.”
Did you write this book as a new beginning?
No, I’m happy where I am right now. I wasn’t sure I would be, but a year into private life, I’m pretty happy. That doesn’t mean I won’t go back to public life at some point.
Some people are saying you wrote the book because you want a role in this administration.
No. I could have been in the Cabinet from the beginning. I got offered secretary of labor. I got offered secretary of homeland security. I got offered special assistant to the president. We talked about chief of staff five weeks ago. I told the president from the start: I only want two jobs, vice president or attorney general. I’m not interested in anything else. Four or five years from now, things might be different, but right now my priorities are clear.
Do you think Trump is going to run again in 2020?
I could certainly see one day the president standing up and saying, “You know what? I don’t want to do this anymore.” And because he’s not somebody who’s been in politics his whole life and it’s not part of his fiber, I think it would be much easier for him to walk away than for other people.
Is he considering that now?
I don’t think so. When the times are toughest, that’s when he digs in. The chances of him not running would be much more because he’s bored. Then he would walk away. When people push him, he pushes back. So at a moment where he’s had a bad six or seven weeks, this is when he’s like, “I’ll show them.”
Was the shutdown a mistake?
It was a mistake, and I told him that at the time. How frequently do you speak with the president?
Once every few weeks. I usually call him in the evenings in the residence, to see how he’s doing and check in on him. Sometimes, it’s because I have an opinion. Sometimes, I ask him what he’s watching.
In the book, you say that the president didn’t want to plan the transition, that he wanted to wing it. He thought it was bad karma. He said to me, “Chris, you and I are so smart. You know when we can work on the transition? We’ll leave the victory party two hours early.” I looked at him and said, “If only it were that easy.” That’s what’s so disappointing about [my firing], because we had a Day One plan, a hundred-day plan, a plan for every week of the transition. We had three people for every Cabinet and senior staff position fully vetted, and executive orders written based upon what he said he wanted to do. All of that, and I mean all of it, was thrown in the trash.
You have kids. Would you let them work for you?
No. It’s hard to fire a relative and then have Thanksgiving with them. The president and I disagree on this, and I’ve talked to him about it. I’ve said, “You made the decision to bring your children to the White House in jobs, and I just think that it makes life more difficult for the president and impossible for the chief of staff.” The chief of staff can’t have those folks report to him because, in the end, they’re just going to go to the president because they can.
So you think Kushner is there to stay in the White House?
I don’t see any indication that Jared and Ivanka are [leaving].
Is Trump worried about being primaried by his party in 2020?
I think he’s always keeping an eye on it, and he’s doing everything he can at the Republican National Committee and other places to preclude it. Circumstances in politics always change, but I think a primary is highly unlikely under the current set of circumstances.
When you look at the Democratic ɿeld, who has the best shot at winning in 2020?
Joe Biden would be a formidable challenger because of his years of service and because of all the chips that he’s collected across the Democratic Party over all those years. He’s one of the people who could challenge the president in those white working-class areas in Ohio or Michigan or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, places the president needs to win. In terms of age, however, the vice president will have to prove that he’s up to the challenge.
What’s your take on Howard Schultz?
Run, Howard, run! As a Republican, we got this done to us by Ross Perot in 1992, and it’s time to have the Democrats have it happen to them. If, 28 years later, it turns out Howard Schultz is the new Ross Perot, then I’m all for it. Let’s go.
How do you feel about Alexandria Ocasio-cortez?
It’s really fascinating that you have people in the Democratic Party— and this is what gives me great hope as a Republican—who are essentially advocating socialist policies like Medicare-for-all and 70 percent tax rates while we’re watching Venezuela implode. You just have to be a thinking, breathing human and look at what happened in the old Soviet states. Socialism just doesn’t work to me as a moral incentive for people to want to improve themselves. And I think it’s ridiculous when someone like Ocasio-cortez says that being a billionaire is immoral.
So what are your thoughts on her proposed tax on income over $10 million?
I don’t want to penalize people for success. In New Jersey, we have the most progressive income tax of any state in the country: The top 1 percent of our state, when I left office, paid 58 percent of the income tax. How much more fair do you want to be? Where is the number? Is it 70 percent? Is it 80 percent? At some point, penalizing success is just bad for society. So I look at folks like Ocasio-cortez, and I say to myself: Advocate for that if you want, but I don’t believe anywhere near a majority of Americans agree.
Actually, national polling shows that a majority of Americans are OK with such a marginal tax.
Sure, everybody is OK with taxing somebody else. But when you explain to them that this will create disincentives for opportunity, things change.
The majority of these people will never come anywhere close to making $10 million.
In New Jersey, a lot of people are making that much—relatively speaking. The fact is, those people are the most mobile and will find a way to get their money out of here. The banks in the Cayman Islands got creative for a reason, because people were looking to avoid taxes. And I don’t advocate that, but it’s a reality of life.
What Bruce Springsteen song best sums up the current political landscape?
“Rosalita,” because of the line “Someday we’ll look back on this, and it will all seem funny.”
Tell me about the meatloaf incident when you visited the president.
The president ordered at Mar-a-lago for me, and I was fine with that because Mar-a-lago has a great meatloaf. That was much different than when he ordered me scallops and lamb; I’m allergic to one and hate the other. I would never do that, order for someone else.
2024?
I’m 56 years old, so I’m not going to rule anything out. I still have a lot of life to live and a lot to contribute, and Let Me Finish is about saying “I’m not done yet.”