- [Narrator] Funding for "Governors' Perspectives" with Kent Manahan is made possible by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, committed to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need.

Additional funding provided by Seton Hall University, Seton Hall School of Law, and by Connell Foley LLP.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president.

- [Kent] Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States, having won the November 5th election and a second term in the White House.

The election marked an extraordinary comeback for Trump who still refuses to accept his defeat four years ago, and who continues to claim without proof that he, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 race.

Since then, the nation has witnessed a violent insurrection at the US Capitol.

The incoming president was twice impeached and acquitted in his first term, has been convicted of felony charges, survived two assassination attempts and has vowed in this term to take back America.

- I am your voice.

Today, I am your warrior.

I am your justice.

And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.

I am your retribution.

- [Kent] It was an overwhelming win this time, voters choosing a president who told them he'd be a dictator on day one, a president promising a priority mass deportation plan, massive tariffs on all products imported to the US from overseas, and who plans to roll back climate and clean energy policies, a president who has frequently said abortion rights should be left up to the states, who has been firm claiming he can end the nearly three year war in Ukraine, even before he takes office.

And who vows to use the military to handle what Trump calls radical left lunatics.

- And we have some very bad people.

We have some sick people, radical left lunatics, and I think they're... And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.

- [Kent] The last few months since the November election and leading up to the inauguration have not been easy for the incoming president.

His first pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, was forced to take himself out of the running following a federal sex trafficking investigation, charges Gaetz denied.

Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host and Army National Guard major who has been tapped for defense secretary is facing questions about sexual impropriety, financial mismanagement, excessive drinking and work conduct.

He has denied all the charges.

There are other Trump cabinet picks who have raised concerns, even among Republicans about their ability to lead and whether they can be confirmed by the Republican majority in the US Senate.

The fate of the incoming president's nominees for cabinet posts is in their hands.

- It's a new day in America.

We have a mandate from the American people to deliver on President Trump's priorities.

- Governor Tom Kean, Governor Jon Corzine, so good of you to be here and thank you for taking the time.

I'm looking forward to discussing with you the incoming administration, the anticipated agenda, and the impact on the nation here in New Jersey.

Governor Kean, what's been on your mind since the November 5th election?

What have you been thinking about?

- Well, I always try to be hopeful and I try to find what are the good things that might get out of this for the country.

And some of 'em, I think president campaign done.

We do have to secure the border.

I mean, that's no question.

That's something we haven't done for too many years and we've suffered consequences.

That's important.

I don't know if he recognized it, but he won on the economy.

He won on the fact that the average person didn't like what they were paying in the grocery store or a lot of other places.

And I think that was one of the reasons he won the election.

- Do some of your thoughts, perhaps maybe even a wish, that there be fewer grievances, less name calling, less attacks on the press?

Let's talk about a rigged 2020 election.

Is that what we should expect as Americans from the incoming president?

- I think the incoming president, you know, I wrote a book called "The Politics of Inclusion" years ago.

That's what I believe in.

I mean, I think we're all equal under the law.

We're all people who care very much about this country.

And just 'cause somebody's got another party label on 'em doesn't mean that you have to dislike them or distrust them.

So my hope is that as he's served already four years and he has learned some things, and I see some signs of that and I see some signs of him talking to Democratic senators, starting to hopefully make the kind of contacts which will enable him to succeed as president.

- Governor Corzine, what have you been thinking about?

What's been on your mind since the election?

- Well, I think the most important thing that a Democrat and how I feel about things is we have to learn to work with the person that the American people chose to be president.

I think that those efforts include looking for places where we can work together.

Talked about border security, Tom did.

There was a bipartisan bill, had to take those kinds of opportunities to work together to do something that the American people truly wanted to see done.

And they expressed that.

I think I would express it differently than the President.

But the point is, the issue needs to be addressed.

And I think Democrats need to be a positive element on that.

Same goes for the economy.

We need to look for areas where we can have common ground and stand up for principles that we believe in as well.

But I think there are things that we can do together and we should look for those very aggressively.

I think that we happen to be in one of the first places this will get tested in the gubernatorial election next year.

- [Kent] In New Jersey.

- In New Jersey.

- Coming up this year.

- There are gonna be plenty of times for the political debate to happen.

I think early in a president's term, people ought to try to find areas of cooperation.

- Well, Governor Kean, what was key in your view to Donald Trump's victory?

It was a decisive victory.

And interestingly enough, here's a statistic in New Jersey the last time around, Donald Trump lost the state, a highly democratic state by 16 percentage points.

But this time around in 2024, he narrowed that gap to five points.

What was key and what does that send to you?

What kind of a message and what does it mean for New Jersey, do you think?

- What it means...

I think there is a question whether it's a permanent shift in any way or it is temporary shift, but there all sorts of people historically have been Democrats who turned as a class almost and voted for Donald Trump.

People are genuinely grieved at government.

I mean, they genuinely feel that government has not been working in their interest.

A lot of 'em feel that.

Liberal wealthy people on the East Coast and the West Coast have been doing their agenda as opposed to what you'd call the people's agenda and they resented it.

And I think some people have said they really wanted to throw a bomb into the system.

And the bomb was named Trump in this case.

They wanted the place blown up because they don't feel the government's been working for them.

Now, the working class party in the past was the Democrats.

I think this time, it was the Republicans.

- [Kent] You think it's reversed.

- It's reversed in this election.

And plus, which you saw him making huge gains among Hispanic Americans.

New Jersey is all about a very democratic state.

But it's a fairly close election in New Jersey this time.

I mean, Trump with a few more percentage points might have carried New Jersey.

But that's a switch.

How long the switch is gonna last for, we have to find out.

- Well, there was a surprise certainly for Kamala Harris, the vice president running against Donald Trump.

What happened do you think?

- [Jon] Well, I think- - Where did that race go wrong?

- Let's start with the bottom line issue.

Inflation and high interest rates are something that impact every American.

It's even a worse economic problem than unemployment being at high levels because unemployment affects 10, 15 million people.

Inflation impacts everybody, and the numbers have stayed very high.

And there was a lot of pressure on folks.

And so I think this election was more about the economy.

- [Kent] People's pocket books.

- Pocket books, and the vast majority of people's real incomes were lower than they had been in previous times when Trump was president.

And that you can argue about why that inflation occurred.

I'd say it had a lot to do with COVID, so that... - Impacted- - The debate of history.

The fact is rates, inflation rates were high and interest rates too, which make mortgages very hard, raises the cost of credit cards and almost everything that people have to live with.

And so I think that was a real problem.

Second problem, not quite as important, but important.

People have lost confidence in President Biden.

He never had a popularity that gave him the credibility to make his case to the American people.

- And of course, Kamala Harris had a very shortened campaign period because Joe Biden did not back out.

- She did not put any distance between herself.

You know, the view comment about I can't think of anything, I think that was a mistake and I think it actually gave her the burden of the upside down favorability that Biden had.

- So now let me move on to the Congress, if I can, because now we have a Republican controlled Congress, but a very, very slim majority.

How will Republicans work, do you think, at the risk maybe of revenge and retaliation from Donald Trump if they don't go the way he wants them to go?

- I think the Republicans are gonna take a little time to figure out what you just said.

I mean, I can absolutely, right, to get anything major done, they're gonna have to work together as both parties in the Congress.

I'm not sure the Republicans understand that yet.

I think they still think they're gonna be able to get some things through on their own.

They'll learn pretty fast they can't.

And at that point... And there are a lot of good people in both parties in the House and Senate.

I mean, those people have gotta get together in the country's interest and try to work with the President and see exactly what they can get done on the major issues that are affecting this country.

- Will Democrats be consensus builders?

Will they help the Republicans to get things through in this Congress, do you think, given the fact that in two years, the House of Representatives and some members of the Senate face reelection?

- Well, that's constant American democracy work.

I would disagree with Tom just on one very specific thing, which wasn't used until recently, both by Democrats and Republicans called reconciliation.

It's a technical term of how the rules of Congress work.

And you can put together a very slim majority to get things done and big things done that fall under the reconciliation rules, taxes and budgets in particular.

And I think that there's gonna be an effort to do a lot of what President Trump wants to do under reconciliation.

- [Kent] He's already talked about it.

- Yeah, no, no.

I think that that's the general strategy that they will follow.

If that doesn't work, which by the way, holding all those Republicans together on reconciliation is not necessarily an easy task either.

If that doesn't work, then I think they'll go to Tom Kean's plan B, which is, let's find some bipartisan ways to do things.

- [Kent] Some common ground.

- But that I think will be later in the process.

- Well, let me ask you about the incoming president's cabinet nominations, some of them facing serious misconduct charges, facing controversy.

One has already stepped aside in the House, the nomination for attorney general.

What do you think those nominations tell us about the policy going forward for Donald Trump?

- I think his first priority is loyalty.

He thought he made a great mistake in his first term.

He sort of put a bunch of people who had their own ideas, who weren't necessarily gonna follow what he ran on and what he wanted to do.

And that was a little bit of a chaos in his administration at first.

He decided this time he needs, first of all, to have people who will go with the agenda, go with the programs that he campaigned on, programs that he thinks he got decisively elected on.

And I think the majority of the Congress has one abiding feel.

I'd like to give the President who he wants to work for him.

That's a general feeling, I think, in the Senate.

Now, what comes up against when you nominate somebody who's got some real flaws and you give the President what he wants at the expense of nominating somebody who you don't think is qualified.

- And the incoming leader, John Thune, the senator who has indicated that there's no guarantees that some of these nominations will get through and they have to be cleared by the Senate.

- Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

And it doesn't take many senators, you know, not many Republicans have to defect, but I suspect maybe I'm wrong and he may lose one more and that's it.

- Your thoughts on that, Governor Corzine?

- I agree with what Tom just said.

There's one more is the most likely outcome, maybe there are two.

Depends on what kinds of skeletons and closets get turned up in background checks on some of the individuals.

But in general, I think a president should have the people that he chooses to run the cabinet offices that are a part of his administration.

I was a senator and I voted for most of the people because I think that's what the public decided during the election.

And they need to have their people.

A couple of these people, including obviously Matt Gaetz, but others are more than questionable and have character issues.

- Let me ask you your thoughts about pardoning January 6th insurrectionists, which the president has said, the incoming president has said he will do on day one.

Even Senator Lindsey Graham, a close confidant of the president, a Republican senator from South Carolina doesn't think that people who attacked police officers should be released from jail or pardoned.

- Listen, our capital and our processes, constitutional processes need to be respected.

And people who showed disrespect for that I don't think should go without accountability for what they have done.

I think there are probably different levels of participation by some of the folks.

I don't know whether the net was too wide or too short.

I don't know the details of it.

Some careful examination of that seems reasonable.

But the guy that was sitting in Nancy Pelosi's office with his feet up on the desk scribbling trash to her when she came back, I don't see how that guy should be pardoned.

I don't see how people that threatened the police officers and broke the windows and trashed the Capitol should be pardoned.

And I don't think that's a Republican or Democratic thing.

That's, do you respect America?

- We're talking about the office of President, Governor Kean.

Next year, America will celebrate its 250th anniversary.

We have never had a woman president.

What is it going to take?

- I think the Republicans had a good woman this time.

If she had won the nomination, I think she would've been elected.

Democrats have some wonderful women.

The former secretary of commerce is one of the most able people in Washington.

It wasn't under the last administration.

She'd be a wonderful candidate.

I think they're good women in both parties and I think nominate one of the best ones and they'll be elected.

- Women across the world have served in leadership presidential positions.

What are your thoughts?

- Politics are very idiosyncratic.

Exercise, primaries are tough.

Democrats need to have one that tests somebody through a longer period of time, which I think was a big problem.

- [Kent] For Kamala Harris.

- With Kamala Harris.

I think Republicans have a number of women that could serve.

I know Democrats do.

And I feel quite confident that our country will be in good hands with a woman leader.

- Let me ask you in some of the remaining time we have left about President Jimmy Carter.

You both knew him.

Your thoughts, Governor Kean, about the legacy that he leaves behind.

What do you draw from that?

- Well, look, he was a wonderful, wonderful human being.

I think in all our long history, he was the best ex-president.

He did wonderful, wonderful things to help not only the country, but the world as an ex-president.

I personally think he was a failure as a president.

And he didn't understand Washington very well, that he made some mistakes, both in relationships with the people who really do, in many ways, help run Washington.

And as a result, he had a term and made some foreign policy mistakes.

So, unfortunately, he wasn't a good president.

I don't think he had much experience.

You know, Georgia's got a very weak governorship and he only had one term.

So he didn't have a lot of experience as an executive at running anything.

And so I think maybe another term, he would've been better.

But this was a very wonderful man who unfortunately I don't think was a good president.

- Who lived as he wished to the age of 100 so that he could vote in this election.

Your thoughts about his legacy?

- Well, first of all, I think that he demonstrated the kinds of character issues that I would like to see in a president, somebody who really does attempt to be honest in how they deal with the issues before the president, somebody who has compassion and diligence.

I disagree a little bit with Tom in the sense that I know he went out on a very bad set of circumstances.

The Iranian hostage situation was not handled well.

And inflation, again, not necessarily even of his making, but inflation is a tax on everybody.

And it was the highest inflation rates we have had in I think probably the history of the country.

The Egyptian Israeli Peace Accord, Camp David Accords, is historic and has served Israel's security and has served the world security extraordinarily well, not done by anyone on any level near that.

Deregulation of the airlines, which allowed the democratization of airlines is an enormous positive step for the American people.

So there are things that you could emphasize.

There are things, as in all of our governance, where you've done some really good stuff and you've done some things that people weren't comfortable with.

At the end of the day, people chose to have him- - Not reelected.

- Not reelected.

- By a landslide.

- [Jon] Yeah.

- Unfortunately for the Carter administration.

As we move into this new year, 2025, let me ask you both, what would you look forward to?

What would you like to see more of?

We've just been through a very difficult presidential election.

We are a very divided nation.

What would you look forward to in this new year?

- Most important thing I think for this country is that we learn again to trust each other.

- [Kent] How?

- Well, one is, I think people in office can set the example.

The Congress used to get along with each other.

They used to be friends.

There was a feeling in the Congress years ago, and my father was in, you never campaigned against somebody in the other party 'cause you had to work with 'em.

You campaigned with a non-incumbent, but incumbent, you... And they lived together.

They partied together.

Their spouses were friends.

It was a whole different atmosphere.

- [Kent] There were relationships.

- Yes, absolutely.

And good friends that stayed good friends over the years.

And part of it was 'cause they used to live in Washington those days, so they were together on weekends and they were, you know, spouses became friends.

But I think you can start to do that again, but you've gotta be intentional about it.

You've gotta decide this is a problem.

We gotta try and solve it.

And the Congress should be not exacerbating the problem, the Congress really should be pointing to the solutions because the Congress can start to set an example, get along with each other, then... - For the good of the nation, you're saying.

- I think the rest of us can start to do the same thing maybe.

- And your thoughts about the new year.

- There's no question that what Tom is talking about is one of the most fundamental needs of the country.

And it takes leadership.

I'm not as optimistic that the top will endorse that, but there are people in the Congress, John Thune is one of the most decent people I know in the Congress who's leading the Republicans.

When you go into the hallways, he will know how to work with people.

And I think it's incumbent that Democrats look for those kinds of things that we were talking about in the first segment of this interview where we can work together.

And I think that can happen.

I think Hakeem Jeffries' work almost made possible the speakership of Speaker Johnson by his efforts.

And I think people are gonna have to look for those opportunities and build on them, regardless of what else is going on.

And ignore some of the media hype that I think tries to divide us.

Tom Kean and I probably don't agree a lot on a number of detailed issues, but I could sit in a room and work with this gentleman.

- As you are doing.

- Yeah, but we could.

We could work things out that got to a decent conclusion.

We're gonna have a choice this year in New Jersey for a new governor.

We need to find people that will work together.

It needs to be an ingredient on what people think about when they vote for people.

- And you can look back instead of forward.

So, I mean, when I was governor, I had a Democratic senate for all eight years.

You know how many of my appointees they stopped?

None.

- Well, sometimes one control can be more trouble.

- You can parish personal relationships.

You can get to trust somebody whether or not they're in the other party.

Brendan Boone and I were great friends, worked together.

I was a Republican leader in the legislature.

He was the governor.

We worked together on all sorts of things and became close friends in the process.

It can be done, has to be done, as a matter of fact, or it should be done and has to be done.

- Governor Kean, Governor Corzine, thank you very much for sharing your perspectives on this program.

We really appreciate it.

- Thank you, Kent.

Great to be here, happy New Year.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Governors' Perspectives" with Kent Manahan has been provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, committed to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need.

Seton Hall University, Seton Hall School of Law, and by Connell Foley LLP.

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