Chris Christie calls Trump a cheap grifter, explains his secret documents hoarding

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) laid out a unified theory of former President Donald Trump, his former ally and current 2024 Republican presidential rival, on CNN Wednesday night. Trump, he told host Kaitlan Collins, is dishonest, obsessive about his boxes, a childish showoff, a longtime grifter, and "the cheapest person I've ever met in my life." And those characteristics explain why Trump is facing 37 federal felony counts and using campaign contributions to pay his personal legal fees, Christie argued.

Trump did not stonewall 18 months of discreet attempts by the government to claw back the highly classified documents he took with him from the White House because he wanted to sell them or anything nefarious like that, Christie said. Trump kept the documents "just to show off. He wants to continue to act like he's president. He can't live with the fact that he's not." Keeping government secrets for ego-boosting bragging rights "seems childish and stupid — and it is — but that's the reason why, in my view, he's always kept them," he said.

Collins asked why Trump keeps coming up with new excuses for keeping and showing off what the indictment says is a secret foreign invasion plan, and Christie said it's "because he's getting cornered," and when cornered, "he'll lie about anything." A recent interview he gave to Fox News anchor Bret Baier "put him in a horrible box that I don't think he's ever going to be able to get out of," Christie said. "He admitted he had the documents, he knew about the grand jury subpoena, but he was too busy to go through the boxes" and "didn't just want to turn the boxes over because he had golf shirts and golf pants in there. I mean, come on, there's nobody in America who believes that story."

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Trump is a "self-professed billionaire," so siphoning off donor money to pay his lawyers is "disgraceful, and it's a continued grift," Christie said. later. "And look, the Trump family has been involved in grifting for quite some time," he added. "Jared Kushner, six months after he leaves the White House gets $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund when Donald Trump had put him in a position to be in the Middle East? What was Jared Kushner doing in the Middle East?"

Christie also took a shot at another GOP presidential hopeful, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by mocking his professed lack of an opinion on Trump's actions before and during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Christie, for his part, had lots of opinions.