Politics - News Analysis

Chris Christie Turned Down Being Trump’s Chief of Staff After a Very Creepy Call from Ivanka Trump

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie claims that Donald Trump made him an offer to serve as White House Chief of Staff, but it didn’t take much for Christie to be completely turned off by that idea. Christie was averse to Trump’s “big mouth,” and didn’t particularly like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s “aggressive behavior,” according to The Daily Beast and Raw Story.

These revelations have come to light in his new book Republican Rescue. In it, Christie writes that Trump leaked details of the meeting regarding the chief of staff job to the media — and later boasted about the meeting in a phone call.

“If I had any doubts about my decision, at that moment they entirely disappeared,” he notes about his decision to reject Trump’s offer after the former President admitted he was responsible for the leak.

But Christie adds there was another factor in his decision — the aggressive behavior displayed by Kushner and Ivanka Trump. This stems from Christie’s time as a federal prosecutor when he sentenced Kushner’s father Charles Kushner to prison for federal tax fraud. That, according to Raw Story, led to a “long-standing beef” with the family.

This led Trump and Christie to agree during the meeting that he shouldn’t manage Jared or Ivanka.

“The next morning, Christie claims, he received a phone call from Jared, who extended an olive branch and offered that he would be ‘fine’ with the man who locked up his dad becoming chief of staff. I’ll be fully supportive of you, he allegedly told Christie,” per the Daily Beast.

Apparently, Ivanka also called Christie’s wife, Mary Pat, and told her: “I know there have been problems between the governor and my husband’s family in the past. But you have my word, wife to wife, mother to mother, that I will make sure that nothing like that happens if the governor comes here.”

Christie writes that Mary Pat was “taken aback” by Ivanka’s phone call.

That pretty much sealed the deal for the former governor.

“By that point, I had pretty much decided there was no way I was going to take this job,” Christie writes. “And the high pressure campaign from the next campaign from the next generation, especially Ivanka’s call to Mary Pat, wasn’t going to convince me otherwise.”

It had been reported at the time that Christie withdrew from consideration for the position due to family reasons or because he wasn’t formally offered the job. But nope, according to the Daily Beast, Trump’s “loose lips” dissuaded Christie.

“The meeting, Christie recalls, featured Trump aggressively selling the job and erupting when the ex-governor demanded he would have the right to decide if and when a chief of staff does media appearances,” according to the Daily Beast.

Reportedly Trump fired back “No, no, no, no, no. I control those.”

When Trump offered him the job he gave Christie a chance to think about it overnight. Within a matter of hours, the media was reporting on the meeting.

“I couldn’t help but wonder,” Christie notes. “There were only three people in that room at the White House. I knew I didn’t leak the story. It seemed unlikely to me that Melania did. Who was left? Did Trump really have someone leak that story even before I’d gotten off the train?”

So when Christie called Trump to reject the offer, he asked about the leak. Christie remembers telling him:

“There were only three of us in the room. I can tell you for sure I didn’t leak it.”

At that point, Trump confessed he was the one who did it.

“He sounded very proud when he said that,” Christie writes, adding that this further convinced him to turn down the job.

But this is typical of Trump. The man has always been a giant blowhard. Whatever you may think of Christie, one can hardly blame him for turning this job down.

meet the author

Megan has lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida and she currently lives in Central America. Living in these places has informed her writing on politics, science, and history. She is currently owned by 15 cats and 3 dogs and regularly owns Trump supporters when she has the opportunity. She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GaiaLibra and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/politicalsaurus

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