Chris Christie, former Republican governor of New Jersey, spent the weekend taking shots at members of President Donald Trump’s administration.
In an interview with the New York Times, Christie defended White House counselor Kellyanne Conway by attacking her coworkers.
“She’s gotten a bad rap at times,” he told the newspaper. “But I think that’s because of some of the really awful people inside the White House who have been trying to hurt her, as opposed to anything the press came up with on its own.”
In a separate interview, he also said White House advisors Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner ― Trump’s daughter and son-in-law ― might be fired by now in any other administration.
The couple has come under increasing scrutiny, especially Kushner, who lost his top secret security clearance.
“This is most particularly sensitive because it’s a family member,” Christie said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
He added:
“In a normal situation, you might terminate a staff member for that reason. [It] becomes a lot more difficult if you’re going to be sitting at Thanksgiving dinner with that person. And so for Jared and for Ivanka and for all the other members of the family we were involved in one way or the other, I think everybody’s got to focus on what’s best for the president.”
Christie ran for the Republican nomination in 2016 but became an early Trump supporter after leaving the race. After the election, he briefly led the transition team.
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