Wishful Thinking: Christie Still Hopes To Get Called Up To The Trump Admin

Republican presidential candidate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reaches for a handshake at a campaign event, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016, in Bedford, N.H. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) “still believes he has a political future” with a President-elect who’s all but turned his back on him, according to a report out Tuesday in the New York Times.

The disgraced governor has taken a beating in his home state thanks in part to the Bridgegate scandal, and was unceremoniously booted from his role leading the Donald Trump’s transition team. Yet friends cited in the Times report said he still hopes to be given a role in Trump’s incoming administration, comparing himself to David Gergen, who served as an aide to former presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

The Times reported Christie “expects Mr. Trump to eventually come around to him,” betting that the President-elect’s current management team comprised of son-in-law Jared Kushner, Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon and Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus will go off the rails.

Earlier in December, NJ.com reported that Trump offered Christie numerous positions in his administration, citing sources with knowledge of Trump’s transition efforts who said the governor turned those those offers down in the hope that Trump would tap him to serve as attorney general. The President-elect instead nominated Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to that position, leaving Christie in the cold.

Why Christie would want to rejoin Trump’s team after everything he’s been through in 2016 is anyone’s guess: in May, then-candidate Trump told Christie that he was banned from eating Oreos, and in June, the New Yorker reported that the governor’s role had been diminished to that of a “manservant” sent to fetch Trump’s McDonald’s order.

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