Chris Christie's New Memoir is Just What You'd Expect

Hunter DeRensis

Domestic Politics, United States

In his new memoir, Christie exposes his own inadequacies, not Jared Kushner's.

Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has fallen on hard times. After leaving office with historically low approval ratings, Christie’s reputation is small coin these days. Less than a week ago, The New Yorker warned that Christie’s fall from grace was a “cautionary tale” for future presidential contenders.

Now Christie is seeking the spotlight with a new memoir, Let Me Finish, that is scheduled to be published on January 29. An advance copy was obtained by The Guardian, as they report. Far from reviving Christie’s reputation, however, it confirms that he remains full of hot air. The advance excerpts make it clear that this isn’t a serious examination of the Trump administration, but a prolonged exercise in seeking revenge against the figures that stymied his rise. Throughout, he appears to serve up warmed-over accusations against his detractors.

The problem is not that Christie was canned from the Trump team; it’s that he should never have been affiliated with it in the first place. In settling scores with a variety of administration officials, he demonstrates that Trump’s reservations about him were fully justified, beginning with declining to offer him the vice-presidential slot to exiling him from the transition team.

In his memoir, Christie reserves special ire for the man he blames for setting him on such an unfortunate (lack of) career path: Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor.

“Steve Bannon…made clear to me that one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out. Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago,” writes Christie.

“The kid’s been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here,” continued Bannon, Trump’s White House strategist before his own unhappy dismissal in August 2017.