The biggest loser in the wake of Donald Trump's rise to the White House? That distinction falls to Gov. Chris Christie, according to Washington Post writer Chris Cillizza.

The political commentator, who writes The Fix blog for the newspaper, published a piece Thursday that says Trump took down a lot of people en route to winning the Republican nomination and then the presidency.

But none, Cillizza writes, were "forced to suffer more" than New Jersey's governor.

The pieces comes day after what Cillizza calls "the latest indignity": how Trump hired Bill Stepien, Christie's former confident, as White House political director even though Christie had publicly cut ties with Stepien in 2014 in the wake of the George Washington Bridge scandal.

Stepien secured a spot in Trump's administration though Christie -- one of Trump's earliest high-profile supporters -- did not. Christie was passed over for both vice president, attorney general, and Republican National Committee chairman. The governor turned down several other posts in the administration, sources told NJ Advance Media last year.

Now, Christie is back in New Jersey, beginning the last year of his second and final term with record-low approval ratings.

So what happened? Cillizza cites unidentified former Christie former allies who say the "pre-Trump perception" of Christie as a strong leader was "always overstated."

"To hear them tell it, Christie was always in the market for someone to follow, to be the guy next to the guy," Cillizza writes. "His friendship with Trump and Trump's, um, forceful personality made the real estate mogul a perfect pick for Christie."

But, he says, Christie's problem was he assumed "fealty and submission" was what Trump, a longtime friend and former Atlantic City casino mogul, wanted. Instead, Cillizza said, Trump seems to "revel in creating discord and disagreement" within his advisers.

"That Trump has now hired someone who was cast aside by Christie amid the controversy that hobbled his own presidential bid feels like the cherry on top of a rancid sundae that Christie has been choking down for the last year," Cillizza writes.