39.

He endorsed Trump two weeks later. He was passed over by Trump for VP. He was pushed out as the head of Trump’s transition team — partly because he (rightly) warned them about Michael Flynn.

40.

Still governor and back in New Jersey in 2017, with beaches closed due to a budget standoff, he sat in a chair with his family on an empty state park beach at the governor’s official seaside retreat. A Star-Ledger photographer snapped pictures with a long lens from a plane.

41.

He didn’t want to be Trump’s third chief of staff. “Not the right time,” he said.

42.

He almost certainly got Covid from Trump in the fall of 2020 (“undeniable,” he has said) while attending the Amy Coney Barrett “super-spreader” ceremony in the Rose Garden and helping Trump prepare for the debates against Biden. The overweight and asthmatic Christie spent seven days in intensive care. Trump called Christie from Walter Reed. “Are you gonna say you got it from me?” he asked. “And that,” Christie would say, “was the last call I got in the hospital from Donald Trump.”

43.

He also registered as a lobbyist in 2020 to represent businesses lining up for Covid relief funds.

44.

He flipped publicly on Trump after the election that November and particularly post-Jan. 6. “I think the last eight weeks has been the worst behavior that I have seen by this president in the four years he has been there,” he said. “His conduct in the last eight weeks has been completely unacceptable for someone who holds the greatest position the American people can bestow on anyone.”

45.

Of late, he’s ramped up his attacks. “I think a president should be our inspiration, not our retribution,” he said, referring to Trump’s pledge in a speech that he would be the latter.

46.

“The election wasn’t stolen. He lost,” he said.

47.

“I think Trump has disqualified himself from the presidency,” he said.

48.

“If you think you’re a better person to be president than Donald Trump, then you better make that case,” he said. “No one else has the balls to do it.”

49.

And DeSantis? “I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative,” Christie said.

50.

He was until last week a political pundit for ABC News.

51.

In the second grade he ran out the door of his elementary school and over to the flagpole and took down the American flag for the night and looked over at the mother of one of his classmates. “Mrs. Cushman,” he said, “some day I’m going to be president!”

52.

Polls say he is at this point historically unpopular.

53.

In April of 2014, not quite three months after “Bridgegate” broke, he attended a celebrity roast in Newark to mark the 90th birthday of Brendan Byrne, New Jersey’s governor from 1974 to 1982. “He’s an inspiration,” Christie told the audience, nodding to Byrne’s reelection against long odds, because he has “shown that political comebacks can actually happen.”

54.

“He still possesses all the assets that made him a rising GOP star and all of the flaws that led to his astonishing fall: relentless ambition and pragmatic competence, shrewd political instincts tempered by inexplicable blind spots, a penchant for vengeance and a volcanic temper, a keen sense of humor and an ability to project empathy, an obsession with fame but humility enough to keep up with old high school friends on Facebook,” Josh Dawsey once wrote. “He’ll resurface because he has too much ability not to,” Tom Kean told Dawsey. “This is why it’s sad in a sense. He’s the most able politician I know, with possibly the exception of Bill Clinton.”

55.

“When I run out of fights to have,” he once said, “I’ll stop fighting.”

Sources: POLITICO, POLITICO Magazine, New York, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, TIME, NJ.com, Newark’s Star-Ledger, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Reuters, Bloomberg, Fox News, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, TMZ, GQ, Forbes, C-Span, Axios, Semafor, Media Matters; American Governor: Chris Christie’s Bridge to Redemption, by Matt Katz; Chris Christie: The Inside Story of His Rise to Power, by Bob Ingle and Michael Symons; Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics, by Chris Christie; Republican Rescue: Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden, by Chris Christie.

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