The incident recounted in Christie’s book, “Let Me Finish,” is among the anecdotes describing how the president and Kushner grappled with a campaign and a presidency that Christie says neither was prepared for.
Part autobiography and part firsthand accounting of a presidency, the book, which will be released Tuesday, paints Trump as a phenom who was obviously effective as a candidate — but who has relied on the wrong people and has been ill-served by many advisers, including some members of his family.
Christie, the former two-term governor of New Jersey and a longtime friend of the president, was among Trump’s challengers for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He became a key, early supporter of Trump after withdrawing from the race, and then ran Trump’s transition — until he was fired shortly after the election, reportedly at the direction of Kushner. He recently withdrew from consideration as White House chief of staff.
Christie describes Trump as averse to interpersonal conflict with people he likes, needlessly nasty to some subordinates and prone to trusting people he should not.
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On Feb. 14, 2017, Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, had lunch scheduled with the president. It happened to be the day after Flynn was dismissed for lying to the vice president about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition. Kushner decided to attend.
As Kushner tucked into his “typical salad,” Christie wrote, the president said to him, “This Russia thing is all over now, because I fired Flynn.” Christie said that he started laughing, and the president asked why.
“'Sir,’ I said, ‘this Russia thing is far from over,'” Christie wrote. Trump responded: “What do you mean? Flynn met with the Russians. That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It’s over.” Kushner added, “That’s right, firing Flynn ends the whole Russia thing.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.