In his review of Chris Christie's new memoir, Let Me Finish: Trump, The Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics, New York Times book critic Dwight Garner writes that "if you want to read an excellent book about Christie and about New Jersey politics, find a copy of Matt Katz’s 2016 biography, American Governor: Chris Christie’s Bridge to Redemption."

Katz, who covered Governor Christie for years and now reports on immigration and refugee resettlement for WNYC, also read Christie's new book, and he spoke with Morning Edition host Richard Hake about what Christie's trying to accomplish with Let Me Finish, and where it does—and doesn't—succeed. 

I just finished reading "LET ME FINISH" by Chris Christie. I think "I TOLD YOU SO, IDIOTS" would have been a more apt title, but he didn't ask me for my suggestion...I have some other thoughts on the book--hear me talk about it on @WNYC this am, or follow along with this thread->

— Matt Katz (@mattkatz00) January 30, 2019

Below are highlights from their conversation:

On Christie's relationship with President Trump and White House adviser Jared Kushner:

Christie describes being closer to Trump than anyone else not in the Trump family. But he says he was denied a chance to be vice president or attorney general, and fired as the chairman of the Trump transition team, because Jared Kushner hates him. And the reason Jared hates him is very Jersey—Christie, back when he was U.S. Attorney, sent Jared’s father to prison for a range of crimes.

Christie says Jared is very bitter about that and he sabotaged Christie’s suggested appointees, which meant all these crooks and grifters took over the administration and led it to the mess we see. There’s a lot of "I told you so" involved here. And he really emasculates Kushner at every turn— he describes his "soft quiver" of a voice and sort of needlessly notes that he always eats salads.

On Bridgegate:

He’s angry. So angry. He views it all as this media and Democratic conspiracy against him, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office to the Democratic National Committee. The first time Christie went to visit Trump at the White House, Trump said you’d be living here if it wasn’t for Bridgegate. There’s too many half-truths and just lies of omission to recount right now, but here’s a few:

• He claims he never had a one-on-one meeting with David Wildstein, the admitted conspirator in the whole thing. But he did have actual meetings with Wildstein when there were other people in the room.
• He doesn’t get into the allegations that he was involved in the cover-up after the planned went into motion, as the sworn trial testimony had shown.
• He doesn’t mention the text messages he sent during critical legislative testimony that were never recovered. He even gets the charges wrong when it comes to what the conspirators were convicted on, reducing the seven counts down to just one.

On what else the book fails to mention:

If you’re a New Jersey resident with some questions about how Christie governed, you won’t hear about that. He does not mention what I think was his most consequential decision as governor—the cancellation of the ARC tunnel into New York. He doesn’t talk about the collapse of New Jersey Transit. He doesn’t talk about the conviction of his political mentor, former Port Authority chairman David Samson, for strong-arming United Airlines into getting a flight route to his summer home. And he doesn’t get into his political side deals with New Jersey Democratic bosses, though he does admit that Senate President Stephen Sweeney was on his side when legislative Democrats went after him over Bridgegate.

If readers are looking for any self-reflection or acknowledgement of mistakes, they’ll be disappointed. And there’s also some straight-up mistruths: He says he didn’t participate in the "Lock Her Up" chant about Hillary Clinton during his speech at the Republican convention in 2016, that he found it distasteful. But last night, I rewatched the video. And he was smiling and nodding along the whole time.