Christie: Trump’s family making it more difficult to run White House

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on Sunday that President Trump’s family members are complicating his ability to run the White House.

Christie said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” that the tough political conversations Trump has to have with his administration members are made more difficult by the fact that family is involved.

Trump is reportedly asking for his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, as well as his daughter Ivanka Trump, to be removed from the White House after negative press coverage of Kushner.

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“The president’s going to have to make that judgment. And this is most particularly sensitive because it’s a family member,” Christie said about whether or not Kushner should leave the White House. “And that’s what I was going to say, George, that the situation is made much worse by the fact that we have family members in the White House.”

“In a normal situation, you might terminate a staff member for that reason. [It] becomes a lot more difficult if you’re going to be sitting at Thanksgiving dinner with that person. And so for Jared and for Ivanka and for all the other members of the family we were involved in one way or the other, I think everybody’s got to focus on what’s best for the president,” he said.

Kushner has faced a series of negative reports over the past week, including one that said his family business received hundreds of millions in loans from investors who had attended White House meetings.

His security clearance was also downgraded after a review of security clearances held by top aides.

Christie on Sunday also praised White House communications director Hope Hicks for choosing to resign, saying that other staff should follow in her footsteps.

“I think Hope Hicks saw that between the Rob Porter situation and some of the other things that were going on that she was becoming a distraction for the president and less of an asset in her mind,” Christie said.

“And she did the noble thing, in my view, which was to say, ‘You know what? If I’m not 100 percent an asset for the president, I’m gonna back away.’ And I think she deserves credit and I don’t think she’s getting a lot of it in this kind of scandal-driven stuff that’s going on,” he said.