Trump phoned hospitalised friend Chris Christie to tell him not to say he got Covid from him, new book claims

‘I got off the phone and I just shook my head. Like, this guy will never change’

Journalist Mark Leibovich’s book on the Trump administration, Thank You For Your Servitude, is set to be released on Tuesday and some anecdotes have already been released as teasers.

Politico Playbook notes one particularly interesting gem included by Leibovich, a staff wrtier for The Atlantic, concerning a conversation that took place between Donald Trump and Chris Christie when they both contracted Covid-19 in the fall of 2020.

“[Christie] had, finally, reached his end with Trump after years of frustrations, humiliations, and thwarted job ambitions. The final indignity occurred in late September after Christie attended a super-spreader reception at the White House for the Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. In addition to the president and first lady, several high-level officials present wound up infected with the virus. This included Christie, whose multiple comorbidities (obesity, asthma) placed him at high risk and landed him in the ICU.

“Trump was being treated concurrently at Walter Reed hospital and called Christie in New Jersey to check in, caring friend that he was. After some chitchat, Trump moved to the real purpose of his call. ‘Are you going to say you got this from me?’ Trump asked Christie. It was important that he not say this, the president reminded him. Contagion, pathogens, ICU — not beautiful associations for the brand.

“‘It was one of the few laughs I had in the hospital,’ Christie told me later of Trump’s friendly reminder. ‘I got off the phone and I just shook my head. Like, this guy will never change.’”

In December 2021 the former New Jersey governor tore into the former president and his staff in an interview, claiming it’s “undeniable” the former president gave him a serious case of Covid in 2020 while he was helping Mr Trump prepare for the presidential debates.

“We knew everybody in the room except for the president was getting tested every day. We didn’t know what the president’s testing regimen was,” Mr Christie told PBS’s Firing Line, adding, “Trump should have told all of us.”

Mr Christie, who has had an alternatively critical and friendly relationship with Mr Trump, also claimed that the president’s chief of staff Mark Meadows hid Mr Trump’s positive diagnosis for days, putting numerous people at risk, only revealing who knew what and when in a recent political memoir.

In Mr Meadows’s own book, The Chief’s Chief, he claims the president tested positive for Covid on 26 September, six days before he announced it to the public and a week before Mr Christie tested positive himself.

“He had an obligation to tell us … I would’ve worn a mask if I knew that,” Mr Christie said in the interview. “So if Mark Meadows knew that somebody that I was sitting across from for four days had popped a positive test, he as the White House chief of staff, putting aside the president for a second – obviously, the president is my friend – he should’ve looked at me and told me that … But I think what’s less obvious is that Mark Meadows saved this for his book. He saved it for a book.”

He claims the former White House chief of staff didn’t even tell him about the positive test timeline when he was in the hospital.

Mr Christie had only nice things to say about then-first lady Melania Trump, who he said would call him every morning while he was in hospital to check on his condition, and then call his wife to see if she needed anything.