Trump admitted he leaked details about his 2018 Chief of Staff meeting with Chris Christie to Axios, according to a new book
- President Donald Trump hates nothing more than so-called "leakers" and news stories with anonymous sources.
- But Trump himself has admitted to being both, according to a new book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.
- In one such case, Trump reportedly admitted to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that he leaked to Axios about a meeting he had with Christie in which he offered him the role of White House chief of staff.
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President Donald Trump hates nothing more than so-called "leakers" and news stories with anonymous sources.
But Trump himself has admitted to being both, according to a new book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.
In December 2018, Trump met with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the Oval Office and offered him the post of White House chief of staff. Just the two men and First Lady Melania Trump were present at the meeting.
Christie, the head of Trump's 2016 transition team, declined the offer.
The next day, Axios reported that the two had met and Trump was considering Christie for the chief of staff role, citing a single anonymous source "familiar with the president's thinking."
Christie then asked the president who he thought had leaked the details of the meeting, according to the book.
"Oh, I did it," Trump reportedly said.
In a 2019 tell-all book, Christie wrote that Trump's son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, pushed him out of the presidential orbit because of Christie's role in prosecuting Kushner's father, who spent more than a year in federal prison for witness tampering and tax evasion.
Once a star in the Republican Party with a nearly 80% approval rating, Christie left office in 2018 with the lowest approval rating of any governor in the state's history. This came after several scandals, including the criminal convictions of two of his top aides.