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Joe McQuaid, publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader said he was disappointed in Chris Christie for his decision to endorse Donald Trump. | AP Photo Union Leader publisher: Christie told me he would not endorse Trump

The day after the New Hampshire primary, the publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, Joe McQuaid, received an unusual phone call.

It was a mutual acquaintance of his and Chris Christie's, saying the New Jersey governor was going to endorse Trump. Christie had dropped out of the race that day, and the Union Leader, which had endorsed him, had gone after Trump with both barrels during the primary, memorably comparing him to Biff from "Back to the Future."

McQuaid was puzzled, he told POLITICO in an interview on Friday. Would Christie really endorse somebody like Trump?

"So I sent a message off to Gov. Christie and he called me right back and I told him what I'd heard, and he said 'No, no, I would never do that,'" McQuaid recalled. "[Christie] told me to tell the other guy to 'take his head out of his ass' for saying he would support Trump."

Christie endorsed Trump on Friday, hailing him for "rewriting the playbook” for how to run a presidential campaign.

McQuaid said he's "disappointed" in Christie, and said his endorsement is not transferable.

"I'm now suspecting him of being involved in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping," McQuaid joked. "It's like Romney says about Trump and his taxes. I think there's something there. Christie hasn't come clean."

Longtime Christie adviser Bill Palatucci said in an interview that though McQuaid's story is not the same as the governor's recollection, their conversation occurred "long before" the South Carolina primaries and that several debates had taken place since then.

"So the governor never said flatly he'd never endorse someone, he simply said two days after his own campaign came to a close that he didn't have any plans to endorse anyone. He was only speaking in the moment about that moment," Palatucci said.