Murphy, Trump Discuss American Unity, Money Over Dinner In NJ

NEW JERSEY - Portal bridge funding, monument removal, social movements and the need for American to unite were on the menu Friday when Gov. Phil Murphy and President Donald Trump sat down to dinner at Trump's Bedminster golf course.

"We had made a significant amount of progress, but we still need a full funding agreement and the president's green light on Friday allows us to proceed with that," Murphy said of the Portal Bridge Project. "This is an $800 plus million dollar federal slug, so that is the big piece of this that can now proceed. This is incredibly significant on many levels including the over 15,000 primarily Union jobs.

Long considered the linchpin of the entire Amtrak Northeast Corridor connecting Boston to Washington, D.C., the 110-year-old Portal Bridge carries an average 450 trains and 200,000 passengers each day. The discussion Friday will now allow New Jersey to head into the full funding agreement on the project, Murphy said.

Need For Unity

Murphy said that his meal with Trump included a discussion on the need for America to come together as a nation and touched on the topics of confederate statues and army bases with names of Confederate generals.

"Its quite clear that this is a moment in time quite unlike any other in our country," Murphy said. "The confederate statues, the naming of the military bases, I think as symbols run counter to a society that works for everybody equally, and we have to take that consideration very seriously."

Murphy also said that it should be clear there are a whole range of issues that he and Trump would be in a different place on, but that should not stop collaboration.

"I don't get the luxury, as I said before, of waking up and choosing which president on that day that I can deal with, which administration. He is the President of the United States," Murphy said. "On something like Portal, on something like COVID-19, on our economic recovery, there is one federal government."

Murphy noted that there is one administration, and they play an existential role no other player can play.

"So we need to find that common ground with a passion just as intense as we have to stand our ground and not pull punches on areas where we are not going to see things the same way," he said.

Murphy also addressed the statues of Christopher Columbus in New Jersey that have also become targets for removal.

"I don't know that I've spent a whole lot of time thinking about the Christopher Columbus statues," Murphy said. "I'm less focused on that than I am on what we need to do in the here and now. But I think symbols matter."

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