CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Interview with Phil Murphy

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Governor Murphy, thanks for joining us.

"The New York Times" obtained audio of a phone call between Vice President Pence and governors yesterday. The vice president said in part, quote, I would just encourage you all as we talk about these things to make sure and continue to explain to your citizens the magnitude of increase in testing and that in most of the cases where we are seeing some marginal rise in number, that's more result of the extraordinary work you're doing, unquote.

But, health experts say that's not necessarily the case, that positive tests in many states are increasing more than the testing is increasing so that there is spread.

Were you surprised when the vice president said that?

GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): Jake, good to be on with you.

I have to say I wasn't terribly surprised. I actually didn't read it that way. We lived through hell and back, and we're finally coming out of it. We've got almost 13,000 lives lost.

At the very peak of this, when we were ramping our testing up aggressively, and positive cases were going through the roof, we were very clear that it was both because of community spread and because we were testing more. So I know New Jersey well. I can't comment on the other states. But my gut tells me if a state's cases are on the rise and they are ramping up testing, it's probably partly due to both community spread to some extent as well as wider access to testing.

TAPPER: According to "The Times," the president also told governors to consider any new outbreaks embers, in other words, small issues that can be handled and are not part of a larger problem. This feeds into a perception that the Trump administration is trying to downplay threats that states such as New Jersey are still facing.

MURPHY: Yes. Listen, we're not done -- I know what we're doing here and we're not downplaying it. Again, we've had an overwhelming loss of life.

But the curves, all the metrics that we look at, the rate of infection, the positivity rates in terms of how many folks who were tested are positive, new hospitalizations -- I'm knocking on wood here, Jake -- those are all going dramatically in the right direction allowing us to slowly but now surely open up.

But we've got our eyes wide open. Could this -- by opening up even if we bat a thousand and do everything the right way, could this still come back? And sadly, the answer is, it's probably a question of when as opposed to if.

So ramping up testing and contact tracing and isolation, all of that, to have that in place to give folks confidence that we can quickly spot it, surround it, drive it to the ground, that's where we're spending a lot of our energies these days. TAPPER: And, as you know, New Jersey, even if the numbers are going

in the right direction, your state lost 51 people to coronavirus. Just yesterday with nearly 500 new cases, just yesterday and you have not ruled out shutting down businesses and restaurants and other places -- again if social distancing isn't followed and cases begin to spike, go in the other direction.

What would make you shut down businesses in New Jersey for a second time? What's the standard there?

MURPHY: Yes. I think -- by the way, you're absolutely right. We have to reserve the right to hit the emergency brake here. I hope we don't have to and we went into this with a pea shooter in terms of our capacities for testing, for contact tracing, for isolation, for all of the ICU beds, ventilators, et cetera. We're much better prepared now than we were three or four months ago, not just our state but as a nation.

I think if you saw a sustained increase over a number of days of rate of transmission, positivity rates, and new hospitalizations, if we saw a string that was a real trend, some number of rolling days on average, that would be very concerning.

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And we would -- we would need to consider action at that point.

TAPPER: I do want to ask you while I have you here about issues of race and policing. You've said that you support the New Jersey attorney general's decision to publicly identify every officer in the Garden State who's been fired, demoted, or suspended for more than five days for disciplinary issues.

Are you working on any other types of policing reforms?

MURPHY: Yes. So last year, just to put a little history here, I signed an independent prosecutor's bill. And I'm very happy I did that. So if there's any death or shooting involving a law enforcement officer, that must go through an independent process ending with a presentation to a grand jury.

The attorney general's reviewing all use of force. We haven't looked at that in 20 years in New Jersey. He has banned in all but very limited circumstances chokeholds. We are -- we are now going to be a state that licenses and goes through a process of licenses -- licensing rather all of our law enforcement members.

And there's a whole range of other legislation that we're working on with our legislative partners including addressing our criminal sentencing and disposition laws. So, there's a lot of moving parts here, as there should be. Words matter, but actions matter even more. So that's what we're pursuing aggressively right now.

TAPPER: All right. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat -- thank you so much for your time, sir. We appreciate it.

MURPHY: Thanks, Jake, for having me.

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