American Governor: Chris Christie’s Bridge to Redemption was not the story that Matt Katz thought he was going to write when he accepted the biography book deal back in 2013. The New Jersey Governor had just won a landslide election in a blue state and seemed destined for a 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. Then, the notorious lane-closure scandal happened, and Matt became the first reporter to publicly confront the Governor on it. From that point on, Christie’s path to the nomination became decidedly choppier, and his relationship with Matt quickly soured.

Matt Katz has covered Christie for the last five years, first for The Philadelphia Inquirer and now for WNYC, New Jersey Public Radio, and the weekly Christie Tracker Podcast from WNYC Studios. He sat down with Brooke to talk about his new book and what it’s like to cover a master of media manipulation. Turns out, there’s much more, and less, to the guy last seen insult mongering from the stage of the GOP candidate debates.

For more On the Media, follow us on Twitter @OnTheMedia, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website, www.onthemedia.org/newsletter.