"Face the Nation" on March 12, 2023
Interview
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Nice to be here, Margaret. First time in person.
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I - I did.
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That's a very good question. First of all, it's good to be here. And I would prefer to say, I stapled the Gridiron speech to my appearance on FACE THE NATION. So --
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Listen, I've - I'm incredibly honored to serve as the governor of New Jersey. We inherited a state that was basically a trainwreck. And we got elected to fix it and got re-elected to continue to fix it. That is job number one, period, full stop.
I'm a former U.S. ambassador, which, in my case, was the Federal Republic of Germany. And, therefore, the international stuff is -- continues to be important to us. New Jersey is one of the most international American states. So, direct investment, relations abroad matter a lot. I'm honored to chair as the National Governors Association, as well as the Democratic Governors Association. So, we have a few balls in the air, but New Jersey is - is job number one.
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I - I will say this. I am 1,000 percent behind President Biden. And I haven't really looked beyond that. He -- I'm certain he's going to run. He deserves to run. He's earned that right. I think he's had a great run here. And I'm going to be 1,000 percent behind him.
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I'm not sure I've got any inside information on that. I don't think historically that he's necessarily out of line when other incumbents have announced re-election. I know we're all sort of expecting it's next week, next month, whatever it might be. My guess is it's sooner than later, but that's - that's something that the president himself will decide.
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Yes (ph).
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Concerned, but not panicked. And I think that's the place we need to be. Depositors and workers in the companies whose deposits are in that bank need to be job number one. We've got a big innovation economy in New Jersey. So, we've spent the weekend trying to make sure we're out ahead of this. We don't have a whole lot of exposure to SVB per say, but we do have a lot of tech companies. So, our economic development authority is preparing a package largely focused on liquidity, to be there in case we need to be there.
So, concerned, as you have to be when you have a bank of this size go down, but I don't think there's any need to panic. And I'm certain that the authorities at the federal level are working feverishly to come up with some sort of solution sooner than later.
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The start-up culture, the start-up tech firms in particular.
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We want to make sure that, as we did during the Covid pandemic, that we are there for them, whether it's loans or whatever the case may be, we want to make sure we're not dragged by this. We want to - we're trying to stay out ahead of it.
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Well, listen, I - we -- we ask ourselves always the question in substance, do we believe in teaching our whole history, the good, the bad, the ugly, nothing but the truth? The answer affirmatively is yes. So, in this case, AP African American studies, New Jersey has one high school teaching it this year. We're expanding it to 26 next year.
He's just trying to divide us. He's trying to change the subject. He's doing it for political reasons, I assume. We want to come back and say, listen, what is the substance? What - what do we owe our - our residents? And we believe strongly that we owe them the ability to read the books, to talk about our history. Again, whether we like it or not, let's make sure we - we teach the -- our country's history, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
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First of all, they did get rolled. They claim they - they were not rolled, but let's -- let's call that for what it is, they got rolled. Florida weighed in heavily.
The good --
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The -- yes.
The good news is, you have a fair amount of latitude in terms of what you actually -- the curriculum looks like at the district level. And I've been asked before, well, does this mean that everything is 100 percent the way you'd teach it? I'm not sure it is or it isn't. But the fact of the matter is, it must be taught. And you do have latitude in terms of constructing that curriculum at the district level. And that's what we're going to do in New Jersey. And that's the way it should be.
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Yes. I don't expect that we will take a stand like that, but we are -- we want Walgreens and CVS and others to do the right thing, which is to be there for especially women, to uphold their reproductive freedoms and not take them away. The villain here isn't the governor of California for sure. The villain here are the attorneys general and governors in many -- sadly, many states right now in this country that are taking freedoms away from Americans, particularly women, particularly reproductive freedom.
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That -- those - those are the villains in this drama.
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No. We're not uncomfortable about that at all. But we want to do the thing that gets the best result. And our - our teams were on, for instance, on Friday, at very senior levels, with Walgreens and CVS, making sure they heard loud and clear that we expect them to do their part to uphold women's reproductive freedoms.
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Nice to be with you.
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