“Would I write a check for $10 million? No, no I wouldn’t. But I do something better than that,” Langone said. “I go out and get a lot people to write checks, and get them to get people to write checks, and hopefully result in a helluva lot more than $10 million.”

In the wide-ranging discussion, Langone spoke about the primary calendar (“the hell with Iowa”), the key to a Christie comeback (“a strong showing in New Hampshire”), and his assessment of the 2016 field (“George Pataki, give me a fucking break”).

Still, the biggest revelation was that Langone, 79, who has long been expected to be one of the chief underwriters of a Christie candidacy, is reluctant to invest huge sums of his own money in his favored candidate.

In a super PAC-era dominated by unbridled giving, the power and influence of bundlers like Langone — and he’s seen as one of the Republican Party’s best — has diminished compared to mega-donors who single-handedly prop up candidates, as Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess did for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, respectively, in 2012.