‘Am I like a baby to you? I sit there like a little baby and watch TV and you talk to me? Am I a f***ing baby, Paul?’
by digby
Actually he is like a baby.
Author Joshua Green, a senior national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek, writes that Christie had run against Trump for the Republican Presidential candidacy but quit in February last year after the New Hampshire primary.
The next month he shocked the Republican establishment by endorsing Trump and began leading his White House transition team.According to ‘Devil’s Bargain’, Trump was in his War Room on election night when it started to look like he would pull of his shock victory.
The book says that ‘although he was surrounded by friends, aides and family members, there seemed to be a force field around him that discouraged a direct approach’.
Friends started congratulating Mike Pence instead and saluting him as ‘Mr Vice President’.
Trump sat down to ‘absorb the gravity of what was happening’ and a moment later Christie ‘burst through the force field and sat next to him’.
Christie said: ‘Hey Donald. The President talked to me earlier’ – the two had gotten to know each other after Superstorm Sandy. Christie said: ‘If you win he’s going to call my phone, and I’ll pass it over to you’.
Trump ‘flashed a look of annoyance, clearly resenting the intrusion’ and was repulsed by the idea of having somebody else’s phone next to his face.
Trump told Christie: ‘Hey Chris, you know my f***ing phone number. Just give it to the President. I don’t want your f***ing phone’.
Aides said that Christie’s move was the ‘ultimate mistake’ and one from which he ‘wouldn’t recover’.
Supposedly, it was because he is a germophobe and doesn’t like to handle other peoples phones.
The book also says he didn’t fire either Christie or Manafort himself — he had Kushner do it.
Manafort was hired by Trump as a campaign adviser last March but five months later, by which time he was the campaign manager, he was already out of favor.
The final straw was when the New York Times published a scathing article titled: ‘Inside the Failing Mission to Tame Donald Trump’s Tongue’ which claimed aides were using TV interviews to give him their message rather than face to face meetings.
Rebekah Mercer, part of the family which had spent $3.4 million on Trump’s campaign, told him that ‘this thing is over if you don’t make a change fast’.
Trump admitted: ‘It’s bad’ but Mercer told him: ‘No, it’s not bad – it’s over, unless you make a change’.
She told him to bring in Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, a pollster and PR executive, and Trump agreed.
The following day at the National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump assembled his staff: Christie, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes, Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates.
Kushner and Trump’s daughter Ivanka were away on a yachting trip in Croatia.
Trump shouted at Manafort: ‘How can anybody allow an article that says your campaign is all f***ed up?
‘You think you’ve gotta go on TV to talk to me? You treat me like a baby!
‘Am I like a baby to you? I sit there like a little baby and watch TV and you talk to me? Am I a f***ing baby, Paul?’
The room ‘fell silent’, ‘Devil’s Bargain’ says.
Manafort’s dismissal was hastened by a New York Times article that ran the next day saying that he had been paid $12.7 million from a pro Russian party from Ukraine.
Manafort had not only kept this secret from Trump but he had not even told his wife who ‘leaped up from the couch in fury’ when she she found out, the book claims.
Aides said that the story was the ‘kill shot’ for Manafort and that later that week when Kushner returned from vacation he told him:: ‘We’ve really got a problem here. You’re going to have to step down’.
Manafort objected because it would ‘look like I’m guilty’, the book says.
Kushner pressed him and said it ‘would be helpful if you stepped down’.
Manafort resisted and said: ‘Yes, but I can’t do that’.
The book says: ‘At this Kushner’s demeanour hardened and he glanced at his watch. ‘We’re putting out a press release at 9am that says you’ve resigned. That’s in 30 seconds’.
So Kushner got to off his enemy Christie. One can’t help but wonder if Manafort has some tales to tell about his enemy Kushner.