Chris Christie has this habit of kicking people when they’re down.

Remember his rants against the teachers who dared to question him at public meetings? Yep, that’s our governor. He was the guy with the in-your-face temper, who never seemed to forget a slight and never seemed to avoid a chance for payback no matter how petty.

Well, now Governor Temper-Payback has a new book called, “Let Me Finish.” At more than 400 pages, intelligent readers rightly should expect something newsworthy.

Don't hold your breath.

There is little news here. But there are plenty of kicks.

Yes, Christie dumps on Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon. But we knew he had problems with those two before.

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Yes, Christie is still miffed that he was tossed off President Donald Trump’s transition team. But we knew that too.

And, yes, Christie loves to portray himself as the smart guy in a crowd of impossibly dumb people – except of course when he turned into Sergeant Schultz of “Hogan’s Heroes” fame and did his best “I know nothing” monologue when anyone asked him about the Bridgegate scandal.

Yep, this is Christie. If nothing else, the man is consistent.

What struck me about his book was not so much Christie's bloated view of himself during his disastrous campaign for president and then his flip-the-switch pledge of allegiance to Donald Trump. I was struck by Christie’s need to hurt people, especially those who are down on their luck.

Here, I’m talking about two people who are not just down but essentially buried in bad publicity – Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly.

Both were convicted in federal court of helping to orchestrate the Bridgegate scandal -- the massive traffic jams on the narrow streets of Fort Lee in September 2013 that were reportedly created to punish the borough’s Democratic mayor for refusing to endorse Christie’s Republican gubernatorial election. Nearly six years later, their saga has not ended.

Stile:Here's what Chris Christie leaves out of his book 'Let Me Finish'

As they await the outcome of their appeals, neither Baroni nor Kelly has been able to land a job. Both are immersed in debt from massive legal bills, friends say.

The point here is not to make you feel sorry for Baroni and Kelly. Both became involved in a foolish scheme, dreamed up by political hack and Port Authority official, David Wildstein, to create traffic chaos in Fort Lee. Indeed, it was Kelly, the deputy chief of staff to Christie who wrote the infamous email to Wildstein that kicked off the gridlock: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” And it was Baroni, as deputy executive director of the Port Authority, who never stepped in to stop the traffic jams.

Baroni, who lives in Manhattan, and Kelly, of Ramsey, are now facing stints in a federal prison. More importantly, both realize they exercised extremely poor judgment in even listening to Wildstein, much less following through on his traffic plot. Meanwhile, Wildstein, after pleading guilty to reduced charges, cooperating with federal prosecutors and testifying against Baroni and Kelly, is free and posing as a journalist by running a tin horn news blog on New Jersey politics.

Welcome to the surreal aftermath of Bridgegate. Real elected officials actually comment to Wildstein about real news events. Wildstein, with media credentials, even shows up at press conferences to ask questions. Few seem to mind. It’s as if New Jersey’s media and political world have opted to join in Wildstein’s Kabuki sideshow.

Video:The GWB Scandal and how 'Bridgegate' was covered (2015)

Baroni and Kelly expressed sorrow during their trial for their involvement in the Bridgegate mess. But neither will probably ever be able to escape the fact that they blindly went along with Wildstein’s idiotic plan to conduct a traffic study of Fort Lee by blocking off access lanes to the George Washington Bridge.

So now we have Christie and his book.

The first question readers might ask is why this book is necessary. Who really cares about a governor who left office with the worst approval rating in New Jersey history? As for Christie’s dance with Trump, again this was hardly innovative choreography. Christie was desperate to escape New Jersey, his failed governorship and his sordid links to Bridgegate. He seemed willing to sell his soul – and most of his brain – to gain Trump’s approval and a spot in on the presidential staff. He comes off as just another political hack.

And so we have page after page of Christie recalling how he met with various Trump functionaries and how he tried to persuade the president that he had a solid transition plan. But we knew all that.

And we also knew about Bridgegate and how Christie can’t escape its shadow, especially when there is clear evidence – sadly overlooked by the FBI and federal prosecutors – showing that the governor and several key players in his administration may have known more about the plot than they were willing to admit.

But instead of offering insight – especially on Bridgegate – Christie spread blame. And this leads us back to Baroni and Kelly.

Christie writes that “Kelly seemed like a nice person” – as if she was really evil and he had been fooled. Then he adds this put-down: “She’d basically be a functionary” who would “run every decision” by Christie’s former political strategist, Bill Stepien who is now a key political adviser to Trump. (If Kelly was just a functionary, doesn't it stand to reason that someone above her asked her to send the infamous "time for some traffic problems" email?)

As if not satisfied, Christie hints that he planned to get rid of Kelly after he was re-elected to a second term in Trenton. “Once the new term began, we’d readdress the lineup,” Christie writes. The message: Kelly was incompetent and was going to get fired anyway.

In fact, Kelly, a single mother with four children, had worked in state government since the mid-1990s and was considered by Republicans and Democrats alike to be a top-notch staffer -- so much so that Christie indicated that he planned to keep her on his staff during his second term. Already, Kelly, who is not related to this columnist, had been widely praised for her work as the Bergen County coordinator for Christie's 2009 campaign that included running a first-rate get-out-the-vote phone bank. In the governor's office, she kept track of Christie's liaisons with local officials.

But you'd never know any of that by reading Christie's book.

Christie is even more brutal to Baroni, one of the few openly gay Republican politicians in America. “I’m convinced that the only part of Bill I misevaluated was his strength,” Christie writes, adding that he did not believe Baroni orchestrated the Bridgegate plot but was “not strong enough to say ‘no’.”

In other words, Baroni was a wimp.

This is the real Chris Christie – petty and vindictive. And now America has his book.

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Kelly:A new film about journalism reminds us what we've lost

What’s striking about the book’s cover is the photograph that Christie chose. It shows him at a public gathering of some sort, trying to make a point to the crowd. His eyes are hard, his face harder. And his left hand is raised – with a finger pointing upward.

It’s not what you think. Christie is making a point with his forefinger, not his middle finger.

But at first glance, it’s hard to tell the difference.

Email: Kellym@northjersey.com