“Blowhard!”
The presidential candidates of both political parties receive several million dollars from the US government for transition planning. This allows both candidates to find, vet and have ready for Senate approval the 2000 or so appointments an incoming president makes to positions in the executive branch.
When Donald Trump became the Republican nominee in 2016 he appointed Chris Christie as his transition chief during the campaign. Christie was responsible for using the federal funds to aid candidate Trump in having an administration ready to go on the day after election should he win. Essentially Christie, working with Trump, should have had each cabinet secretary ready to send to the Senate for approval as well as many of the subordinates to those officials. Plus the rank and file personnel to staff the White House.
The day after Trump won the election, he found that Christie had done nothing. There was no administration ready to go. Trump ended up firing Christie and scrambling to find people to staff the new administration, including the key secretaries in his cabinet. Christie’s failure, which Trump certainly shares since he should have noticed Christie wasn’t doing the job, resulted in Trump making hasty decision for many key appointments, many of which were bad (Reince Priebus, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis for example). Trump was scrambling for months after the inauguration to fill jobs and had to rely on Obama holdovers to keep the executive branch running.
This monumental dereliction of duty in the critical job of staffing a new Republican administration alone disqualifies Chris Christie for serious consideration as a presidential candidate. After this display of incompetence, it is laughable the media, and any Republican official, donor or voter, give him the time of day. Of course it may be that Christie’s failure was intentional and he served a purpose in ensuring the new administration did not hit the ground running to implement the MAGA agenda.
Thanks for that insightful post. I hadn’t known that about Christie. I already knew he was an a-hole, and probably at the time Trump appointed him, felt it was a bad choice, but I hadn’t known any of the other stuff you stated. What a useless POS. He basically sabotaged Trump from the beginning. The only thing I remember Christie doing when he was Governor of New Jersey was being tough on the teacher’s unions. After that...nothing, other than the Bridge Scandal.
I take issue with Trump being at fault for not noticing Christie wasn’t doing his job. Trump was holding 3-5 rallies a day during the last few weeks of his campaign so he hardly had time to check up on Christie. As the head of the Trump Organization, he was used to delegating tasks and expecting ppl to finish their assignments. Christie obviously, literally and figuratively, was a huge disappointment.
It also goes to show you how shocked & surprised the Deep State/RNC was that Trump won the election. That wasn’t supposed to happen, they were assured, so campaign officials were caught flat footed after 11/8/2016. I think that’s when Trump first realized he’d get no help from the ppl around him.