Bridge Over Troubled Waters

In a new memoir, Chris Christie gets the last word (well, probably not) on Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner—and that Mar-a-Lago meatloaf

- Nicole Goodkind

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.