Chris Christie was very direct in his criticism of the recent news that President Donald Trump made $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses last year.
On ABC’s This Week Sunday, Christie compared what he called Trump’s “corruption” to that of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“He and his family think they deserve this,” Christie said.
“They believe, when they came back and won the election the second time, that gave them permission.That the American people gave them permission to take whatever they could during that time.And, frankly, when you look at the size of this, here’s something else Donald Trump learned from Vladimir Putin during his first term.This is a type of corruption and self-enrichment that’s similar to Putin’s.”
Trump has defended his earnings, telling reporters, “I don’t get involved in my personal — we have funds that run my money.
I don’t talk to them.I never — I don’t even speak to them.So I have many people — I don’t know what they call it — closed accounts, or something.You put your money in, and that’s it.”
Christie mentioned that “the laws don’t stop him from doing this,” which made This Week host George Stephanopoulos interrupt.
“Potentially the Constitution does, the Emoluments Clause,” Stephanopoulos said.
Christie replied, “That’s right,” and then pointed to the new Air Force One gifted to the president by Qatar.
“I mean there’s a difference between, obviously, individual ethics laws, which don’t apply to him, but the emoluments clause, when you look at the plane.
And what I think will hurt him more is when he says things that turn out not to be true.Oh, the plane is a gift.It won’t cost us anything.Well, no, it costs us hundreds of millions of dollars to get it up to Air Force One level of operation.Every time he says one of those things, the ballroom won’t cost anybody anything.Now we’re talking about them wanting to move a billion dollars to work on the ballroom.”
He added, in closing, “The American people are starting to catch up to this.
You can feel it.”
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