1/28/2019

CHRIS CHRISTIE/MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When Chris Christie first met Donald Trump, over dinner at the Manhattan restaurant Jean-Georges in 2002, the developer ordered for both of them. This power move has received insufficient study. When Zadie Smith met Jay-Z, he did this to her, too. ‘Apparently,”’ she wrote about the encounter, ‘I look like the fish-sandwich type.’ Trump had waiters bring Christie the seared scallops and the roasted lamb loin. ‘I’m allergic to scallops,’ Christie recalls in his new memoir, ‘Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics.’ He adds, ‘I’ve always hated lamb.’ The future governor of New Jersey was gleaning lessons in domination. He was an apt pupil. ‘Let Me Finish’ is a superficial and ungainly book that tries to cover so many bases at once — it’s a series of attacks and justifications, it’s a master class in sucking up and kicking down, it’s a potted memoir, it’s a stab at political rehabilitation — that reading it is like watching an octopus try to play the bagpipes.”

Dwight Garner, “Chris Christie’s Memoir Praises Trump, but Says, ‘I Told You So’,” The New York Times online, January 28, 2019