Murphy: NJ May Have 'Saved Lives' Had Trump Not Played Down COVID

NEW JERSEY – Gov. Phil Murphy told CNN on Wednesday he would have shut down New Jersey earlier if he knew President Trump, as he admitted in a book by journalist Bob Woodward, played down the coronavirus threat.

"If we had known that earlier, we would have shut the state meaningfully earlier," Murphy said in an interview with Pamela Brown on CNN.

Murphy said New Jersey would have moved to a mandatory masking policy earlier and would have had a stay-at-home mandate put in place.

"All of which we did and we did it about as early as any American state but we would have done it earlier and undoubtably saved lives," Murphy told CNN.

Trump was recorded on tape saying that he always wanted to play it down because he didn't want to create a "panic."

In a Feb. 7 recording – one month before the first case and fatality were discovered in New Jersey – Trump was also recorded as saying that he knew the virus was airborne and that it was much more dangerous than the flu.

Murphy began ordering shutdowns to the state's economy in mid-March, and by April, the state was recording 3,000 to 4,000 cases a day and 300 to 400 deaths a day.

"We were clobbered," he said. "It's inconceivable to me that we wouldn't have saved lives as a result."

Here is the CNN interview:

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