Did Donald Trump dodge a bullet in declining to make Chris Christie a part of his cabinet?

The New Jersey governor's latest beach shenanigan would surely suggest it.

Supposedly, Trump decided not to make Christie, an early supporter, part of his cabinet. The leaked story at the time claimed that president-elect Trump was incensed about Christie's behavior during the Bridgegate scandal, allowing a longtime aide with kids to take the fall, going to jail, instead of accepting the responsibility himself.

Now the story is that Christie got caught clearing off a public beach on a summer weekend under the pretext of a budget dispute, taking advantage of a grace-and-favor mansion there so he could have it all to himself. According to the Daily Mail, he was unrepentant.

It's actually a story with a lot in common with Bridgegate, which involved Christie officials ordering a logjam in bridge passage to New York, in order to trigger an avalanche of angry phone calls to an official who angered him. The act was never traced to him but his aides were caught. Now he's in another scrap with the public by denying passage again to the public, this time to a crowded beach on a hot holiday summer weekend. What is it with him and passage? He seems to think the right to passage is a privilege, not a right, and he now has a pattern of obstructing it.

He's also exceptionally selfish. The Bridgegate scandal came to light shortly after the New York Times wrote a piece detailing his tendency to be vindictive. Now hogging the beach to himself is little more than vindictive selfishness, given his low poll numbers.

He wanted the beach all to himself.

(It was that attitude, by the way, that killed Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, by the way. When Chavez had cancer, the Brazilians offered him access to their best cancer facility and said they could cure him. Chavez declined the offer because the hospital refused his demand to clear out the entire hospital so he could have the facility all to himself. He opted for Castrocare in Havana, where such clearouts are common.)

At a bare mininum, what we see here is that Trump is a good judge of character. Christie could have easily been involved in another scrap of this kind in a Trump cabinet position, embarassing the president. By steering clear, Trump dodged a bullet.