The MeidasTouch Podcast - Governor Murphy Responds to Trump DOJ Threat

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Trump lawyer and now DOJ official Alina Habba threatening Democratic Governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy and Meiselas interviews Governor Murphy exclusively on MeidasTouch. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. I'm joined by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. Governor, the interim United States Attorney in New Jersey, Alina Haba, went on Fox and she called you out by name yesterday. You may have seen that.

I want to show you the clip and then get your response to it. Let's let's play the clip. Do know we know that the governor has on his Web site currently do's and don'ts for his local state of law enforcement. Those do's and don'ts instruct them not to cooperate with illegal immigrants who have administration administrative warrants that have been issued by the court after due process saying that they are no longer welcome here. They have gone through the court system. They are to be deported. It is instructing them to go against our federal rules, our executive orders. And I am unfortunately going to announce on your show tonight, Sean, and I want it to be a warning for everybody, that I have instructed my office today to open an investigation into Governor Murphy, to open an investigation into Attorney General Plattkin, who has also instructed the state police not to assist any of our federal.

And they list our federal agencies that are under my direction, the FBI, the DEA, all these individuals that are trying to clean up our streets in New Jersey not to cooperate. That will no longer stand. Pam Bondi has made it clear, and so has our president, that we are to take all criminal, violent criminals and criminals out of this country and to completely enforce federal law. And anybody who does get in that way, in the way of what we are doing, which is not political, it is simply against crime, will be charged in the state of New Jersey for obstruction, for concealment, and I will come after them hard. Those investigations will start immediately. Governor, a federal prosecutor, interim United States Attorney Alina Haba, says she's coming at you hard and she announced on Fox a criminal investigation of a state governor.

What's your reaction to that? Well, Ben, for whatever reason, I missed my normal Sean Hannity show last night, so forgive me. That's the first time I've seen the clip, although I read about it. Listen, let me just tell you what has been in place since we first came into office. We are guided by something called an immigrant trust directive. And let me just say, by the way, by many metrics, gun fatalities, shootings, serious crimes, New Jersey is among, if not the safest state in America. We go after criminals hard, period, full stop, regardless of their immigration status. What we don't do is we don't

go after somebody for jaywalking or where there's no probable cause of a crime. And we're very clear about that. And by the way, if it's the former and there are immigration issues, we cooperate regularly, frankly, daily with federal authorities. Again, if you're a criminal in New Jersey, we're coming after you. And if there's an immigration angle to that, we'll work with the feds for sure. But the reverse is not true, that we're going to go after somebody just because they're crossing the street. Law enforcement in New Jersey is obsessed with bringing justice on crimes and against criminals. We're not in the immigration business. If we need to work with immigration authorities,

federal authorities, we absolutely do. I would probably say even daily. It's a little bit like saying, frankly, this is a simplified version. Law enforcement doesn't fight fires. There are firefighters for that. So we try to not cross those wires, but we are vigilant about crime in New Jersey. And as a result, we have, I believe, the safest state in America. And a lot of that has been built on a past of state and federal partnerships and task force to get the bad guys off the street. I mean, people need to realize that one of the most effective ways that you go after the bad guys in the states and the drug dealers and the cartels and people across the country are these

relationships. So it's just so odd that the very first action when she's named interim United States attorney is to flip that upside down, go on Fox, in my view, kind of cosplay, and then be like, I'm going to go tough on the governor. That's like an outcry. Yeah. Listen, I'll tell you, to your point, Ben, about cooperating, not only do we do it day in and day out, largely through the law enforcement dimension, I personally host an annual dinner of all of our partners, including NYPD, Pennsylvania representatives, Delaware, so our neighborhood, but importantly, FBI, U.S. Attorney, Secret Service, AFT. I personally host that and we literally sit around, what are you hearing? What am I hearing? Our Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Department of Homeland Security. We cherish and value those

relationships. And as a result, again, it's another reason why, again, we're not perfect. There's crime in New Jersey, for sure. But it's a big reason why we've been able to keep crime as low as we have. And God willing, we'll continue to do so. Let's talk about the economy. Every day seems to be more chaotic than the next. Tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs increased. Are there tariffs? Are we tariffing penguins? What's happening the next day? I mean, here's what just happened in the past 24 hours.

The euro and yen surging, U.S. dollar falling, stock futures were crashing yesterday, up and down, up and down. The bond markets are imploding. The 10-year treasury yields are soaring. You've got a business background. You're an ambassador, business background, two-term governor. What do you just make of all of this daily chaos? In my perspective, it's unlike anything we've seen. Yeah. And it's self-inflicted. I'm not a tennis guy, but you know that phrase, unforced error? This is a series of unforced errors. It's not that the core principle or objective is off base necessarily. A couple, do we want secure, humane, by the way, enlightened

for sure? Do we want secure borders in our country? Yeah, I think we do. I think folks overwhelmingly voted in that direction. And that's something that we've been espousing in New Jersey. Who's for government efficiency? Count me in. I want that in the worst way. In fact, I obviously didn't like the result of the election in November. But one of the silver linings I thought might be, hey, they got a lot of smart tech guys. Maybe there's stuff we can learn from how they're going to approach this. We in New Jersey are aggressively implementing generative AI to do the mundane stuff so we can not replace, but upskill our workers.

Stuff like that, we're all in for. Do we like the fact that we don't manufacture as much stuff in America as we used to? No, who could like that? In fact, in New Jersey, we're backing a big multi-hundred million dollar incentive package to get more manufacturing onshore in Jersey. But it's the execution, Ben. This is the Flintstones executing all of the above. It's not efficiency, it's cruelty. And the markets, the tariff piece, what will that lead to? Broken alliance. By the way, China needs to be called

out. I'm not sure this is the way I do it. In fact, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing it this way, but they need to be called out. And there are other actors out there that need to be called out. But the Canadians don't need to be called out. We are one of 36 states where they're our largest trading partner. They're our best allies in the world. I'm the former U.S. ambassador to Germany. This is one of our best allies in the world, folks that have stood shoulder to shoulder with us for decade upon decade. Let's do this in all of the above, whether it's the border, whether it's government efficiency, whether it's getting more manufacturing jobs based in America. Let's get the adults in the room and do all of this the right way. What you're seeing, particularly in the past week or so,

is complete chaos. And when you see the 10-year bond exploding, folks are telling you inflation's around the corner. When you see markets like a sine curve, that's the opposite of stability. Folks invest in stories that they can see going forward multiple years, including in countries. A strong dollar is in our national interest. You're seeing the opposite of all of that these past number of days. It must break your heart, though, as the former ambassador to Germany to now see the types of statements that are being directed at the European Union and how Germany has to defend itself, whether it's the new chancellor coming in, Friedrich Mers, or Chancellor Scholz saying, we've been betrayed. We have to stand up. We can't rely. I mean, as the ambassador to Germany,

the whole thing was building the greatest relationship. There was great relationships there. And now you have them and leadership basically saying, publicly, America is not reliable. We need to live in a world without them. We don't trust them. Those are the statements coming out, not just there, but across the world. Yeah. And Ben, it's almost as though that all that came before is now for not. And this notion that we can, to use that phrase, put the toothpaste back in the toothpaste container. It's going to be hard, if not impossible, I fear. You're going to have an every four-year clock. Well, who's going to be in that office next? And you're going to see unintended consequences here that are significant, including,

and heartbreakingly, as you said, among our closest allies in the world. It's a complete shame at the moment. And I pray that we get a lot less volatility and a lot more trust into the system ASAP. You know, a lot of attention was on New Jersey during the 2024 election. Trump predicted he was going to win New Jersey. If we're being objective about the data, there were at least some shifts that turned a little bit more, a little bit more red than we're used to. I guess, one, why do you think that was? But two, with all of the chaos that's being taken place with the attacks on Social Security, Medicaid, the gutting of the federal government, attacks on veterans, I could go on and on. It would take an

hour. Are you seeing shifts? What are you seeing on the ground there? That's a great question. So last year, President Trump shrunk his loss margin by almost 12 points in New Jersey. And it wasn't just New Jersey. You look at New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, New York, California, I believe he shrunk his loss margin by 10 to 12 points across all five of those states. So not unique to us. It clearly emboldened him.

I know he thinks he knows New Jersey very well. So his sort of core states of interest, I think are New York, Florida, and New Jersey, where he has a home, where he's had casinos in Atlantic City, where he's got family. So he, I think, feels like he knows the state well, emboldened by a smaller loss margin. And we'll see. I think it's a uniqueness to him personally. I didn't see the coattails. I'll give you an example.

He won Passaic County, which is pretty shocking, I have to say. But all of the countywide candidates right below him on the ballot, Democrats, won handily. We're going to know whether it's him or a broader trend because New Jersey is one of two states this year, as is always the case after the presidential, along with Virginia that have a governor's race. So we've got a very contested primary on both sides. Primary is June 10. General election is November. I assume the president will play. I'm not sure on the primary, but I'm certain he'll play in the general. When I first got elected, Ben, he had just had his first year in office. We thought that was chaotic. We obviously weren't anticipating the past two and a half months, but I kind of ran against that

chaos and won by two touchdowns. I'm not sure that playbook will apply this year. I think it will for the Democrat, whoever the Democratic nominee is. But we're in uncharted waters, to say the least. You know, I do all these shows on how I've felt that a lot of disservice was done by corporate news and normalizing the chaos that took place in the first administration to make us have that men in black magic wand to prevent, to pretend these things didn't happen. And I was like, wait, that first term was not a good one. So stop pretending that it was, but there was a prevailing narrative. But now with the chaos that's taking place with all of that, we've seen, have you seen

when you travel the state, whether it's Democrats, Republicans, independents, people who aren't political, are you seeing shifts just in your own observations? Knowing politics in Jersey probably better than mostly anyone there right now. What are you seeing the moment right now? Well, as a Democrat, I'd say there's good news and bad news. The bad news is the Republicans are outregistering Democrats. And they have been, I think say there's good news and bad news. The bad news is the Republicans are outregistering Democrats, and they have been, I think, something like 41 straight months. So as a narrow Democratic party matter, that's very concerning. On the other side, and this is, you probably saw this, Ben, around the country as we saw it in New Jersey. We lost the election in November. All of us stunned,

sort of a little bit of a, if not more than a little bit of a deer in the headlights period of time that extended, I think, until fairly recently. That has begun to shift. We had these protests on Saturday in New Jersey, just like we had them around the country. It reminded me so much so of the 2018 cycle, people coming out of the woodwork, places we're guessing 500 people would show up and three to five thousand folks showed up. a while. Probably shame on the Democratic Party that it's taken this long. We sure would have liked to see this enthusiasm going into the election, but you're now starting to see it, and it's palpable. So I think that ground is shifting. Where will this head over the next six to eight months? I think if the chaos and volatility, again, I'm not even arguing with the core principles of more manufacturing, more efficiency, let's have smart borders. I'm okay with all that. But the execution, if it remains at this level of volatility and chaos, I think you're just going to see more

and more folks, including folks who are not Democrats, just reasonable Americans coming out of the woodwork and saying, you know what? I didn't sign up for this and I'm not going to stand it any longer. Governor Phil Murphy, thank you so much for joining us. First time on the Midas Touch Network. I hope not the last, Ben. Well, that's why I was going to ask you what you got planned after, but I figure that's how I'm going to get you on the next one. Yeah, I don't have a clue. I'm going to come out and buy you a beer in Southern California

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