Trump Is ‘Saddled With Riffraff’ In White House, Chris Christie Says

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie explains in his new book that Trump has surrounded himself with the wrong kind of people. He claims that this has led to many of the gaffes and mix-ups which he says has plagued his administration so far.

Christie’s new book, Let Me Finish, isn’t set to be released until January 29. Yet excerpts of the book have been released, excerpts detailing Christie’s time inside Trump’s inner-circle — when he served as the head of the transition team during the campaign, according to reporting from Axios.

In the book, Christie explains that Trump was “urgently” seeking to find the “right people” to surround himself with in order to put “a solid picture in place.” It didn’t work out, according to Christie.

“Far too often, he’s found himself saddled with the riffraff,” Christie said, leaving no uncertainty as to how he felt about the staff that was picked after his departure.

Although he was selected by Trump to lead his transition team months before the election had commenced — such an appointment isn’t unheard of — Christie was fired exactly one day after Trump won on election day of 2016.

Previous excerpts from Christie’s book, released earlier this month, detail how he learned that Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, had led efforts to have him ousted. Christie claims that the ouster was due to Christie’s involvement in prosecuting Kushner’s father for tax fraud in the 2000s, according to reporting from CNN.

Chris Christie, in new book, says Trump hired "riffraff" https://t.co/8Yz2iHOYct pic.twitter.com/UOB99dDhRA

— The Hill (@thehill) January 21, 2019

Additional excerpts released on Monday demonstrate how Christie really felt about Trump’s choices after his departure from the role.

“Instead of high-quality, vetted appointees for key administration posts, he got the Russian lackey and future federal felon Michael Flynn as national security adviser. He got the greedy and inexperienced Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He got the high-flying Tom Price as health and human services secretary. He got the not-ready-for-prime-time Jeff Sessions as attorney general, promptly recusing himself from the Justice Department’s Russian-collusion probe. He got a stranger named Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.”

Christie suggested that, had he stayed on as head of the transition team, things would have been different. He had handed the president-elect “a detailed road map” that would have “launched him on a far more promising path,” the former governor wrote in his book.

Instead, Christie said his plans were trashed — and that’s not just a figure of speech, he explained. “All thirty binders [of the plan] were tossed in a Trump Tower dumpster, never to be seen again,” Christie wrote.

The White House has yet to respond to Christie’s allegations.