Former NJ Gov. Whitman on the State of the Republican Party

Steve Adubato sits down with Christine Todd Whitman, Former Governor of New Jersey (R)-NJ, to talk about President Trump’s leadership, the public employee pension crisis and the state of the Republican Party in New Jersey.

12/14/2019 #328

Excerpt:

"Hi, I'm Steve Adubato. It is our honor to be joined by the Honorable Christine Todd Whitman, who is the 50th governor of the great state of New Jersey. Good see you, Governor. Good to see you again, Steve. Oh, so many things to talk about. Can we start nationally? Sure. How dangerous, in your view...? Because you said it publicly. You've tweeted it. You've written about it. You've been on the air talking about it. How dangerous, in your view, not just as a Republican, but as an American, is President Trump's presidency to date? I think extremely, extremely dangerous. What he's doing is marshaling people's fears, focusing their hate on one or two groups, and then undermining people's confidence in the news media, in the courts, anybody who opposes him in any way, shape, or form. Even if it's based totally on the rule of law, he'll say, "Well, they're wrong. I'm right. They're wrong." And people are believing that. And it's gonna take a long time to come back from that. How many people are believing him? Enough to keep a lot of Republicans scared of opposing him, because they're afraid that in their primaries, these are the people that are gonna come out and vote. Because in fact, those in the center have done a lousy job of upholding that part of our responsibility. Yes. Sorry for interrupting, Governor. If you're listening on the audio side, podcast, this is Governor Christine Todd Whitman, the 50th governor of the state of New Jersey. She had national titles as well. Served in the Bush Administration as the head of the EPA. Let me ask you this. One of the things about you that's always struck me is your civility, your sense in the spirit of the late Millicent Fenwick. Okay. Who would disagree. Alright. But never do it disagreeably. Right. When you tweeted that, quote, "Hitler has nothing on Trump" and then took that quote down, but then never took... never said, "I want to change the spirit of that tweet," I'm confused. No, I put it up to be a shock value. To get people's attention. And then I took it down so we could engage in the further conversation, "why would I say something like that?" Yeah, why? Look at what's happening. Look at the way... if you do some comparisons between the 1920s and 30s, and the rhetoric then and the rhetoric we're hearing now, again this idea of, it's a certain group that's doing it all to you. "You'll be all fine if we'd never have any Mexicans. It's really the Muslims. Any Muslim is terrible. Is bad. Or the Deep State? Or... yeah, exactly. The Deep State. He's undermining confidence in everything. Or we..."