‘Putin-Esque Type of Corruption!’ Chris Christie Shreds Trump Over His Crypto Profits

Chris Christie was unsparing in his analysis of the recent revelation that President Donald Trump made $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures last year.

In a scorching commentary on ABC’s This Week Sunday, Christie compared what he billed as Trump’s “corruption” to that of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“He and his family believe they are entitled to this,” Christie said. “This is an entitlement to them. They believe, when they came back and won this election the second time, that that gave them license. That the American people gave them license to essentially go and take whatever they could take over this period of time. And, quite frankly, you know, when you look at the scale of this, here’s another thing apparently that Donald Trump learned from Vladimir Putin during his first term. This is Putin-esque type of corruption and self-enrichment!”

Trump has defended his profits, telling reporters Wednesday, “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 went on to say “the laws don’t prohibit him from doing this” — which drew an interruption from This Week host George Stephanopoulos.

“Potentially the Constitution does, the Emoluments Clause,” Stephanopoulos said.

Christie said, “that’s right,” and went on to cite the new Air Force One gifted to the president by Qatar.

“I mean there’s a difference between, obviously, as you know, between the individual ethics laws, which do not apply to him, but the emoluments clause, when you look at the plane. And what I think will start to hurt him more is that he says things that turn out to not 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.”

Watch above, via ABC.

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