New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie got into a spat with a baseball fan at a game in Milwaukee on Sunday, his latest public relations snafu to cap a month of snafus.
In a video posted to Twitter, Christie is seen leaning over a fan who heckled him, angrily calling the man a “big shot” before storming away with a bowl of nachos.
The governor was at the stadium to watch the game between the Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers. Christie’s son works for the Brewers.
A local news reporter for the station WISN12, Ben Hutchison, said he was a relative of the man Christie confronted, Brad Joseph. Joseph told the outlet he yelled the governor’s name “and told him that he sucked,” which sparked the encounter.
“I called him a hypocrite because I thought it needed to be said. He turned around back towards me and got in my face for what seemed like a long time, but was probably only about 30 seconds or a minute. (He) was yelling at me. First he told me, ‘Why don’t you have another beer?’ which I thought was a decent come back, and I thought that was kind of funny. Then he started calling me a tough guy.”
It’s the second ballpark blunder for Christie this month. He was roundly booed by fans at a New York Mets game after catching a foul ball and giving it to a kid nearby, just weeks after he was lambasted in the media for closing some public beaches in New Jersey over the July 4 holiday weekend, and then vacationing on one himself.