- [Narrator] Major funding for Chat Box with David Cruz is provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association.

Making public schools great for every child.

NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of New Jersey residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Promotional support is provided by Insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.

Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players an interactive forum for ideas, discussion, and insight online at www.insidernj.com.

[jazz music] - Hi everybody.

Welcome to a special edition of Chat Box.

It's our look back at the highlights of 2022.

It's been a year of great guests, interesting, informative and sometimes entertaining.

We've poured over the clips and come up with some highlights, starting with politics.

Do the results from this week suggest that there will be more of a challenge to Donald Trump come 2024 and less of a challenge to Joe Biden from inside the parties?

- I can't tell.

So I'll give you what my staff always tells me not to do.

Don't be a political pundit.

- Do it, do it.

- Be a policy guy.

Focus on where your strength is.

But the one thing I wanna say is that there really is a test going on in this nation, and I think Donald Trump unfortunately, is forcing the test, which is, do we believe in the democratic processes, the continuance of government, what has been a lightened democracies all over this country?

Do we continue in that way, even if it's to the detriment of a party?

Or do we say we're about the person Donald Trump no matter what, win or lose, even if it's undermining democratic traditions, democratic norms.

And that's the test right now.

And it's a test not going on in the Democratic Party.

It's the test going on in the Republican party.

And when you even have, you know, a mainstream state like us, where you had candidates running in this election, I was stunned from the school board level all the way up to some of the Republican congressional candidates that couldn't answer directly the question did Donald Trump win the 2020 election or not?

That is worrisome, and I think the Republican Party is going to be tested and do Republican officials want to drag down our democracy for the sake of their petty political partisan aims?

- You have no, no clue though.

Senator, did you have no clue that Sean Caddle was a wrong guy?

- How could you?

He was such a gentle person, always abiding by the rules.

He insisted as I did that whenever we worked- - He hired two hitman, senator.

I mean, that's not abiding by the rules.

- How would I know that?

Did you know that?

Did you know that?

- Yeah, but I don't follow Sean Caddle and I don't talk to - Yeah, but how would - Sean Caddle on the phone.

- I know that?

- Oh, hey Ray, by the way, you know, I know I'm your campaign manager, so you should know I hired two hitman and they killed somebody.

You think he would've told me that?

- I guess that's a good question to ask you.

- Come, ask me.

Be serious.

Be serious.

Hey Ray, I'm a murderer but I still want to work on your campaign.

- You had no sense of Sean Caddle's dark side?

- Not at all.

As a matter of fact he was, when I wasn't able to reach him, he said, oh, I couldn't, I was taking my wife to the hospital, or he had some health problems or his child.

He was a very gentle, respectful, always called me senator.

I don't think any, well, at least anybody in my circle, certainly would've thought that Sean Caddle was a murderer.

- You're a big TV star.

You're traveling around the country campaigning for other Republicans, which leads all of us to wonder what is the, the calculus number one and what is the timeframe number two for when you'll decide if you want to run for president?

- Well, the calculus will always be the same, right?

It, to me, you've heard this over and over again, and so you may actually wind up believing it at some point, right?

First is, do I see a pathway to winning?

I have no interest in doing this, David, for the experience.

I've already had the experience.

Number two, do I really feel like the skills and abilities I have fit the moment?

And number three, is the family supportive of it?

Are they willing to do this one more time?

If I answer yes to all three of those, then I'm running.

And if I answer no to one of the three, then I'm not.

And that's really what the calculus will be.

And in terms of the timing, the other thing that this has been good is I'm in no rush.

You know, David, I don't have any problem with, as you kind of alluded to, I don't have any problem with notoriety.

I think there are very few people in this country who are involved politically who don't know who I am and don't know at least something about my background and my experience.

And so I don't feel like I'm in any rush to go and introduce myself or reintroduce myself to the American people.

I think they know me pretty well.

And so I don't feel like I'm in a rush.

So sometime in 2023 probably, you know, end of first quarter, beginning of second quarter, is somewhere around the time where I think you probably have to make a decision.

- I know you're a guy who never likes to look back.

You're always forward-facing.

But can you just share your reaction either on election night or or in the days thereafter when you realized you had lost this election?

What expletive did you use?

- Holy [bleep].

You know?

You know, David, it was a, it just, there's no way to explain it.

You know, it was a red wave.

We actually had 12,000 more voters voted this election cycle than the last one.

And they all voted Republican.

- Of course, the burning issue among some people in the city is the status of Councilwoman Amy DeGise.

- Yeah.

- Who we have to call an ally of yours because she was elected on your slate last year.

For those who may not know, Amy DeGise hit a guy on a bike and didn't stop.

She was driving an SUV, she reported the incident six hours later.

There's a concerted effort now to have her resign.

I know you and I talked about it this.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- You have said she messed up by not stopping, but you didn't call for her resignation saying that the legal process should play itself out.

But, I know this is a hypothetical, but if you saw a video of her, as we did, of her running through that red light, if you saw a video of her and she was shooting someone on MLK, would you have the same opinion about her resigning?

- Well, let's say under the circumstances that you laid out she would've been arrested and charged with a felony, which is an entirely different circumstance than what happened here.

She was given essentially a traffic ticket.

She's fortunate that the cyclist wasn't hurt who ran the red light.

What she did was really, really hard to explain.

And I'm interested in hearing how she does, but at the end of the day, she's entitled to that due process.

You have a small group of people that have been very, very vocal coming to the council meetings and that number of people has been decreasing.

It hasn't compromised her ability to do the work.

She's been a good council person, and she's entitled to her day in court.

- [David] But you also know- - [Steve] It should apply to her, like it applies to everybody else.

- But you also know that she's not just, you know, you and me or anybody else.

She is a councilwoman who is elected to represent the entire city because she's an at-large council person.

Doesn't she have to be held to a higher standard?

- She does.

And she still is entitled though, to due process.

Because you're an elected official doesn't mean that you abdicate your ability to have due process- - Sure.

About, about the legal process.

Yeah.

But I'm talking about the politics of this and the reality of the politics of that.

- Look, you know, over the course of the last 10, 15, 20 years throughout New Jersey, you've seen people unfortunately indicted for bribery, arrested for drunk driving, issues like what happened with Amy DeGise, and there hasn't been a consistent call by this group or any group with regards to resignation.

You'll often hear these people say, "Well they're entitled to due process."

And that's the rule of thumb.

So if somebody doesn't like Amy DeGise personally, they're entitled to say she should resign.

I've said it is a tough thing to defend as she shouldn't have left the scene of the accident.

But it doesn't change the fact that we're a country of laws and she's entitled to that due process.

- So, but is there no political price that she should pay?

- [Steve] The political price is via the electorate when she stands for reelection.

Or there's a mechanism in New Jersey, which is a recall.

- Is it the mission of a state park to provide these recreation options like baseball fields, soccer pitches, or is there something about Liberty State Park that requires it to act a little bit more like a county or a city park?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

I don't know that I've got a strong opinion one way or the other.

Could you see a model that looked like the Olmsted's Central Park without the cars going through it?

Perhaps.

Could you see another Olmsted Park, Weequahic, which has a much more explicit, while Central Park has some ball fields and whatnot, Weequahic's got a lot more of that.

I'm not, I don't know that I've got a strong opinion one way or the other but it's a gem.

I know it could be better than it is, especially for the neighborhood around it.

- We need more women in elected spaces.

We need a woman in every single space where a decision is being made.

Not because we're perfect, but because we lend ourselves in a different way, in a different capacity.

Put five women in a room and give us a great obstacle to overcome, none of us are gonna agree on the bottom line.

We're gonna curse, we're gonna scream, we're gonna cry, and we're gonna laugh.

But when the door opens, you will not know what has happened in that room, except for the fact that we move the needle and we move the line in the sand.

And that is true power.

- I also think that there's an issue of not only gender discrimination, but genderizing the jobs that we typically find ourselves in and therefore devaluing them as it relates to society.

Now we talk about there, some of the frontline workers who were very essential, particularly during the pandemic, but you even think about nurses, and you think about teachers, and you wonder, and you know, folks in administrative positions.

Those position tend to pay less than their sort of counterparts at a different level.

And we find, we typically find the women in those levels.

We need to reimagine the impact and the value of some of those care industry jobs to our communities, keeping our communities safe and healthy, as well as other types of work that women typically find themselves overly represented.

- That's the NJ GOP.

They're standing there, but they are dead on arrival.

That's why John's hitching his wagon to Phil Murphy to go national in 2024, because he knows the New Jersey Republican Party is dead on arrival.

- All right.

John Bramnick, are you hitching your [laughs] first to Phil Murphy?

- Well, first when the governor and I worked together to do some funding for a school and for schools in my district and that's one of the things I advocate for.

But let me tell you something.

Just because a governor's of another party, or a president's of another party, we still have to deal with them and not simply attack them.

That doesn't work.

- I wanted to give you an opportunity to answer what my question was, which is, what is it about Phil Rizzo's brand of Republicanism that bothers you?

- Because he spends most of his time trying to get people to understand him as opposed to trying to understand the people of New Jersey and the people who are voters in the state.

It's pretty much all about him and his views.

It's never open-minded.

And if you're gonna represent people, you represent a lot of different people with a lot of different views.

It's just not about me.

- We also covered the other big issues of the day, including education and healthcare, and when a natural disaster struck Puerto Rico, we covered that story too.

- Yesterday was five years since Maria, and I'm in the exact the same condition I was when Hurricane Maria hit.

I spent five months and 21 days with no electricity in this community.

We all spent five months and 21 days with no electricity, post Maria.

- Let's talk about Maria.

You must be saying "Dio mio, here we go again."

How would you compare the response of emergency services on the island this time?

Any better, any worse?

- No, it hasn't improved at all.

I would say that it's worse.

Why?

Because with Maria, the lessons had to be learned.

You know, with Maria, maybe there was maybe, maybe and I say maybe because I believe that the government has a responsibility to the people, right?

And if you know, we're in hurricane season.

We live on a tropical island.

This isn't something that should be up for grabs.

They should be organized.

The government should have an organized response for these hurricanes and tropical storms that are coming, to jump into action immediately.

I haven't seen one government official since Sunday, obviously the hurricane, but Monday, come to this community and ask, "Does anybody need anything?"

My next door neighbor is my elderly grandmother.

She's 92 years old.

If I wasn't there and she didn't live next to me, what would happen to her?

And these are the vulnerable people that we have to look out for, and it's the government's responsibility.

And they're just not up to par.

- Have you seen anyone from FEMA on the ground there?

- No.

At least in my community, I haven't seen any FEMA response.

- When you hear the governor give such a kind of a non-answer, professor, what's your reaction to that?

- Well, I just have to say candidly, and this isn't the first time I've said it, I've been very frustrated with this governor.

You know, it's not right that that the attorney general has to defend the case.

- One of the biggest issues facing schools and kids and families is learning loss caused by the pandemic.

How do we recover from this?

I mean, some kids have lost a whole school year.

- Yeah.

As much as we were thankful for the opportunity to learn remotely, we know that's no substitute for in-person learning.

I'm seeing the joy in the faces and the students catching up this year when I visited schools.

But look, we have more money in education now than we've ever had.

We need to match the funding with urgency to provide additional support.

What that looks like is after school programming, summer programming, smaller class sizes, higher quality materials, and support for our educators that are providing this instruction to students.

We know what to do.

We know what to do.

We just have to make sure we're not going back to the same system we had in 2020.

- You have seen the worst of and the best of what humankind can do.

Are you optimistic that we can avoid just destroying ourselves?

- Well, yeah.

I hope so, David.

That would be a terrible outcome.

One of the things that's been so disturbing, at least over the last two and a half years with this pandemic that we are experiencing now has been the distortion and the disinformation and misinformation that has gone around that has created a real challenge for the scientific method.

Because particularly with social media, things that make no sense at all that range from pure conspiratorial theories to out-and-out disinformation has made it very difficult to mount a very good response against a pandemic that's challenging all of us.

- That's why I asked that, because there is so much dis- and misinformation out there and social media is not going away.

It seems like we're in this perpetual echo chamber and people only listen to what they wanna listen to.

And there's a real danger in that when it comes to science and medicine and pandemics, no?

- Absolutely.

That's the big danger, big enemy of public health is misinformation and disinformation, particularly when you have the machinery of social media which does nothing but amplify that.

- Is there ever going to be a time where getting vaccinated is not so fraught?

Because when we talk about getting a flu shot, there's no outcry about people saying, "Oh no, I'm not gonna get a flu shot."

Are we ever gonna get to a point where getting inoculated against COVID is just your choice and you are not automatically killing people by not getting vaccinated?

- That's a great question.

You do know right now, from birth to 18 years of age there's about 16 vaccinations that are required.

We don't hear much about that, do we?

From birth to two years, the parents will tell you they're constantly bringing their children to be immunized.

I believe we will get there.

I have to say, even though there's a lot of pushback and we see it in New Jersey, I don't think we have as much pushback as some other states.

- Why is it that when a black woman pursues an opportunity that is equal and open to all, there is somehow a cast upon her that she did something wrong?

I was investigated, I believe, in retaliation for the strong public support that was displayed for me.

I thought that if I was able to come in, we could totally and fundamentally change the leadership of the organization to ensure that not only workers, not only patients, but not only family members and visitors, but all persons across the human experience could receive the highest quality, the safest and the most equitable socially and culturally fluent care.

And recall, I never got the opportunity to apply.

I was just fighting for a chance.

- And of course, if it's Chat Box, there's gotta be a laugher two, some art, and some music.

- The D is for doing it all of the time.

M is for the rhymes that are all mine.

Then I said, C is for cool, cool as can be.

And then my partner Run would ask me "Why you wear those glasses?"

And I proudly proclaimed to the world, "So I can see!"

And that was so powerful.

That was so powerful.

Me not being ashamed.

I need to wear glasses to help me see.

And you think something wrong with that?

By me not being ashamed of it was so powerful that people that don't even need to wear glasses wanna wear 'em now.

So I want the kids to see those qualities, your freckles, your red hair, your funny shoes, the clothes that you wear, the color of your skin, even down to the funny food that you like.

You are perfect just the way you are.

- You know, it's interesting you mentioned that, because the nickname for me when I was a kid was "Blindo" because I had poor vision when I was younger and I had to actually stand up close to the blackboard to take notes.

- To write.

Wow.

- But those things, they can either break you or- - Or make you.

- Make you into the person that becomes a world record hip hop artist who changes the world.

Something that drives me crazy, and I know I'm gonna sound like an old man here, and you're gonna sound like an old man too, but what drives me crazy is when people talk about Latin music as if it's one thing.

I mean, is there a more diverse music?

Really?

- Well, forget it.

I mean, the problem is today that people listen to Latin pop and reggaeton, which is basically popular music done by Latino artists, and Latin pop and Latin rock.

You have rock.

It's basically artists doing rock with Spanish lyrics et cetera, Latin pop as well with balance, et cetera.

And then reggaeton has that concert [sings upbeat dance rhythm] rhythm which we call in Puerto Rico, cafe con pan, cafe con pan.

And that's just one rhythm.

We have thousands of rhythms.

I mean, Colombia alone has over like 150 styles of music.

- So can you take us to the call or however it was that you got notified that you had won a Pulitzer?

- Yeah, so I learned a few days before, and it's a super top secret experience.

And what's exciting about winning as a journalist is that the New York Times does a really beautiful event celebrating their writers.

And also celebrating the moment.

So yeah, it was the biggest, best secret I've ever had to keep.

So, but regardless, I just feel really blessed and in such historic and rare company.

- Come to the jazz house, come in to our in-school programs.

It doesn't matter what neighborhood.

This music has something for them.

I haven't found a young person yet in 20 years that this music doesn't speak to.

It doesn't mean that they're not gonna go on and play rock and do any kind of other things and be a rapper and all of that.

But when they come and experience jazz, they grow as an artist and as a musician in ways that are invaluable for life.

We just feel that when you build musicians, the world is a better place.

- Senator, you got a quick minute for some of your questions real quick?

- Yeah.

Come on.

- All right.

So this one is not from your moms.

It's "Why ain't you married yet?"

- [laughs] Well, first of all, this is a good friend who pokes at your wounds.

- This is my dedication to our mentor, our dear friend, one of the dearest member of our community.

He's always in my heart, and in my wall, Dizzy Gillespie.

Look at him there.

- [David] Yes.

- That is a poster from the first concert that we played with him in a big band they put together, he call it Dream Band.

It's probably you were in that concert in Lincoln Center.

- [David] It's possible.

- Many years ago [speaks foreign language].

Everybody was there.

- [David] Wow.

- So to remember that all the time, here is Dizzy.

And this is my tribute to Dizzy Gillespie.

- [speaks foreign language] So that we could see all of you.

- Okay.

[laughs] [jazzy clarinet music] [jazzy clarinet music continues] [speaks foreign language] - Any year that ends with a Paquito D'Rivera solo can't be all that bad.

And that's Chat Box for 2022.

We're really looking forward to the new year and hope that you will stick with us as we head into 2023.

We thank you for your support, and we thank all our guests for joining us.

I'm David Cruz.

From the entire crew here at 2 Gateway Center in downtown Newark, thanks for watching and happy new year.

- [Narrator] Major funding for Chat Box with David Cruz is provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association.

Making public schools great for every child.

NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of New Jersey residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Promotional support is provided by Insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.

Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players an interactive forum for ideas, discussion and insight online at www.insidernj.com.

[jazz music]