Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been brutally snubbed by the Boss.
Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band were playing at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday night as part of his Land of Hope and Dreams U.S. stadium tour, where the Republican former U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey was spotted in the front row throwing down.
Several clips have emerged of joyous Trump foe Christie, 63, fist-pumping, head-bobbing, pointing, drumming, and playing air guitar to the sounds of President Donald Trump’s nemesis.
Sadly for Christie, amid the good times was a moment far tougher to watch, as Springsteen walked around the edge of the stage, still singing during the set.
As the “Dancing in the Dark” singer approached the podium, he walked past Christie, who held out a hand for a high five, but the Boss, 76, head down, walked straight past him.
Christie looked crestfallen, pulling his hand back, looking up at the roof, then over at his companions with a nervous air. Refusing to stay down, he then broke into a slow clap.
Christie, an outspoken critic of Trump who has previously called him a “coward” and “puppet of Putin,” is a well-known Boss fan and has been filmed dancing in crowds at several of his shows over the years.
His bio on X even reads, “Husband, proud father, former Gov and U.S. Attorney, Springsteen fan.”
He spoke about his love for the “Streets of Philadelphia” star on The Fifth Column podcast in March, when he was asked about their relationship.
“It’s really good,” Christie responded. “We text, we talk.”
Springsteen is known to have his primary residence in the upmarket neighborhood of Colts Neck in New Jersey, one of the state’s highest-income communities.
“When I was U.S. attorney, he liked some of the stuff that I was doing to clean up Asbury Park, and I put a number of Asbury Park officials in jail for corruption. He liked that,” Christie, who served as U.S. attorney from 2002 to 2008 and New Jersey governor from 2010 to 2018, told the podcast. “Then I got elected to governor, and he didn’t really like that too much because I was a Republican—am a Republican.”
He said the “Born to Run” singer had been appreciative of his response to the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012.
The pair’s relationship strained in 2013, when Springsteen and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon did a song mocking the Bridgegate scandal, in which Christie’s aides intentionally closed lanes of the George Washington Bridge, creating traffic jams in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a move some speculated was for political reasons.
“Then I was p---ed,” Christie continued.
In 2015, he said, they began to repair their relationship.
“So I wasn’t talking to him. Then, the next year, we happened to run into each other at the airport. If I get to the airport early, which I did this one time with my family... they don’t let me sit out in the area. They give me a room to stay in until we have to get on the plane.
“And so my troopers came across the hall and said, ‘I don’t know if you want to do this or not, but Mr. Springsteen and his family is in the room across the hall. They’re waiting to go on a flight and he found out you were here and he asked if he could come over and see you.’”
He said their families were speaking while Christie was “playing like I have no interest in talking to you. And [Springsteen] said, ‘I shouldn’t have done that song thing because I feel bad about it because it’s piling on and you didn’t do anything wrong... So I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
Christie said he accepted the apology, and at a show in Brooklyn years later, they ran into each other and have been friends since.
“He goes, ‘But you know, I have a lot of respect for you.’ And he said, ‘I want us to be friends, and just let’s put the politics stuff aside. Let’s just be friends.’ And I was like, you know, I went to my first show when I was 13. So, I’m like, ‘Yeah, OK, no problem.’
“And since that time, we’ve been regular correspondents.”
Christie isn’t the only Republican whose politics have clashed with the “Born in the U.S.A” singer’s.
Springsteen has had a bitter public feud with Trump, calling him a “moron” in Rolling Stone two months before the 2016 election.
In April this year, Trump called on his followers to boycott the singer, calling him “a dried-up prune” in a scathing Truth Social post.
“Bad, and very boring singer, Bruce Springsteen, who looks like a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon, has long had a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump said.
Christie is also on bad terms with Trump. He was one of the first big-name politicians to give the president, 79, his endorsement in 2016 and served as the chair of the Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission under him in 2017 before becoming governor.
He used to call him “Donald” even when Trump was president, but Axios reports that during Jan. 6, Trump declined to pick up Christie’s calls.
By 2024, he was all in against Trump, saying during one speech in January of that year, “The phrase Make America Great Again has always offended me, because it implies that America wasn’t great.”
