New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday night that his children were more upset by the outcry over his trip to a closed public beach during the state government shutdown than any other event in his two terms.
The governor’s time in office has been rocked by scandals, the latest of which was his being photograph lounging on the beach during the state government shutdown. His spokesman defended Christie on NBC shortly after.
“You’re using some photographs about a man on the beach with his family. That’s a scandal, apparently,” he said, according to The Hill.
“That beach is closed 365 days a year. That particular segment of the beach is part of the governor’s residence. He was on the beach for 45 minutes, [then] came back to work in Trenton,” the spokesman added.
The governor said Thursday that his kids “were more hurt by this latest episode than they’ve been hurt by anything else that has happened in the eight years and they don’t understand people’s unfairness and, quite frankly, their ignorance,” Christie said on his call-in radio show.
“They came to me and said, ‘It’s our fault, we should have just told you that we would have just told all of our friends to go away.’ And I said to them, no, this was my decision,” he said.
“That incident was in these eight years the most hurtful incident to my children.”