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Christie: I'm not Trump's sidekick

Chris Christie wants to be clear: He is not Donald Trump's sidekick.

“No, I don’t feel like a sidekick. You know, I’m an endorser of someone for president of the United States," the governor of New Jersey said Tuesday at a news conference. "And if that makes you a sidekick in your world, that’s OK by me. But that’s not what I would see myself as.”

Two weeks after appearing alongside Trump sans umbrella, Christie said that he was offered an umbrella and, unlike the Republican frontrunner, chose not to use it.

"My staff will tell you and the troopers will tell you over the course of time that whenever they try to put an umbrella over my head, I shoo it away," Christie said. "I’m not an umbrella user unless it is pouring rain. I don’t mind getting a little bit wet every once in a while, and I’m not obsessed with my appearance. So I’ve not been a guy who’s used an umbrella over the course of time. So I know you’re concerned that maybe I was getting a little bit wet and that maybe it was an act of rudeness by my friend Donald—it was not. We were both offered umbrellas. I turned one down, he took it."

Recounting his past work as the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Christie said that he has worked for numerous candidates and incumbents for state and federal office.

"When you’re there to help them, you’re not the show. They’re the show. And if you try to make yourself the show, you’re not helping them," he continued. "So when you’re there to help somebody, you’re there to help them, and you do whatever you think you can do and that they want you to do to be helpful if you agree to be willing to do it. And I know it’s hard for all of you to understand having covered me for all this time, that I might actually be willing to take a backseat to anyone. I’m more than happy to take a backseat to someone if that’s the role that I’m supposed to be playing at the time, and if you support other candidates, that’s the role you play."

The New Jersey governor has been the subject of perceived slights at the hands of Trump, including on Monday when the Manhattan billionaire remarked that Ohio Gov. John Kasich was in New Hampshire even more than Christie. “I hated to do that, but I had to make my point," Trump told a Columbus, Ohio, audience.

After memes mocked Christie's stone-faced appearance during an event with Trump on March 1, the governor said, "No, I wasn’t being held hostage. No, I wasn’t sitting up there thinking, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’”

Even Hillary Clinton has been caught wondering what prompted Christie to endorse Trump.

"Did he have a debt?" Clinton asked MSNBC's Chris Matthews during a commercial break while taping a town hall event Monday. Matthews speculated that Christie would not have much of a political future in the state, with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker not "going anywhere."