New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (Screenshot)

(CNSNews.com) – New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous” on Sunday that President Donald Trump “has been ill-served” by staff members who are creating distractions with their infighting and leaking to the media.



“Well unfortunately from the beginning, and I’ve been saying this from the beginning George, staff failures to the president have exacerbated this problem. The president’s a unique political figure, the tweeting and the other things that he does make him unique, and it’s part of what made him popular and made him able to win, and it also creates some downsides,” Christie said.





“But, you know, the Rob Porter situation was not a situation the president created, which has led to all the other things we’ve seen this month,” he said, adding that “the fact that you had all these people on interim clearances has created a lot of these problems.”



“And so it’s nice enough to say well, you know, the president creates some drama, and we have to look away from that,” Christie said. “But the problem is the president has been ill-served, in my view, by staff over the period of the last 15 months where they create a lot of the distractions through their infighting, their leaking and all the other things that we know have been going on here.”



Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s top security clearance was reportedly downgraded amid questions on whether he could be vulnerable to foreign manipulation and because of reports that his family’s business received millions in loans from banks that he met with in the White House.



Meanwhile, as CNSNews.com previously reported, White House Communications Director Hope Hicks announced that she is resigning to pursue other opportunities. Hicks was dating former White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter, who resigned after it was discovered he only had an interim security clearance because he was accused of domestic violence by his two ex-wives.



Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said that leaking information on the president is a fireable offense.



“And I think that he deserves, you know, better coverage for the things that he’s getting done, and I just always try to focus people on the results as opposed to the distractions, because I do think he’s doing a great job,” Priebus said.



On Kushner, Christie said he and others counseled Trump against having family members in official positions – “not because they weren’t competent or qualified or that the president didn’t trust them, but because when circumstances come up that the president couldn’t have been aware of -- and in a normal situation, you might terminate a staff member for that reason.”



The governor said it “becomes a lot more difficult if you’re going to be sitting at Thanksgiving dinner with that person, and so for Jared and for Ivanka and for all the other members of the family we were involved in one way or the other, I think everybody’s got to focus on what’s best for the president.”



He said everyone on staff should think about what’s best for Trump and the country.



“And people talk about the drama he creates. I would suggest he only creates half the drama that goes on in the White House, and the other half is caused by staff who are killing each other,” the governor said.



“I’ve seen these stories attacking Kellyanne Conway from people inside there -- who seems to be the only person who’s been hanging in there with the president and putting his message out there. This is the kind of stuff that’s just unacceptable,” he said.