“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday criticized White House adviser and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, arguing that Kushner harmed the administration with his efforts to block former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) from joining the administration.
During an interview with Christie, Kilmeade argued that it was “hard not to conclude” that the governor’s exclusion from the Trump administration had harmed the first two years of Trump’s term.
{mosads}Kushner has been rumored to have battled Christie’s potential nomination as attorney general due to a grudge centered around Christie’s past prosecution of Kushner’s father.
“I could have prosecuted this case,” Kilmeade said, referring to the conviction of Kushner’s father in 2005 on charges of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering.
“You could have,” Christie responded, laughing.
“This is not your fault, and it’s amazing that he never let it go and, in the end, I think it’s hard not to conclude he hurt the president’s first two years,” Kilmeade said.
Kilmeade’s comments come after Christie made accusations in a new book published this month that Kushner carried out a political “hit job” to derail the former governor’s appointment to a position within the Trump administration after Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
“[Kushner] implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up,” Christie writes in the book, according to excerpts published by The Guardian. “Just a lot of feelings — very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years.”
“[Former White House chief strategist] Steve Bannon … made clear to me that one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out,” he continued in the book, writing of his firing from the transition team. “Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago.”