Governor Murphy is no stranger to callous comments, most infamously when he advised those concerned about taxes that New Jersey probably wasn’t for them.
Earlier Tuesday, in advance of a visit from Joe Biden, Murphy took it to a whole another level… appearing to blame people who drowned in last week’s catastrophic flooding for their own deaths.
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Watch:
Today, on CNN, @PhilMurphyNJ said that he wasn't "sure" earlier warnings would've worked for people who drowned in their cars and that they should've been "sharper." pic.twitter.com/Gqeitq8Wax
— Alex Wilkes (@AlexandraWilkes) September 7, 2021
Transcript:
JIM SCIUTTO: One of the most alarming things with this storm, we’re seeing people die in their cars, right? I mean, trying to get away, perhaps underestimating the risk. But but I wonder, is one of the lessons from this that warnings when something like this is approaching, have to go out earlier and more urgently to avoid deaths like those?
GOV. MURPHY: I’m not sure about earlier we were we were screaming out all day on Wednesday, I had a press conference at one o’clock, our emergency offices, our functions were activated at noon at the state level and all all counties, tornado warnings and flash. Flood warnings both went out. It’s quite striking, by the way, that no one died from the tornadoes that hit in the southern part of the state, even with houses that were completely destroyed. But we do have to look in the mirror on the flood warnings. So I, I don’t I am open to any good ideas here. Should they be sharper? Should people as a human nature that folks say, you know what, it’s water, I can deal with it. And as you rightly point out, we tragically lost many people in cars trying to beat the flood.
JIM SCIUTTO: Maybe next time we’ll take it more seriously.
Yup. He went there.
What chance did they have to beat he flood when they had little to no warning?
What did you expect from a guy who killed 8,000+ seniors in long-term care facilities, folks?
This guy is incapable of just saying ‘yeah, I’m sorry, we f’d up and it won’t happen again.’ It’s not a question of the warnings being ‘sharper.’ It’s not a warning if it goes out AFTER the dangerous thing already happened!
Jack Ciattarelli – his November challenger – has called for an investigation into the Murphy Administration’s distressingly slow response to the rain, flooding, and tornadic activity that left at least 27 dead and many more with severe damage. For example, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf declared a state of emergency 13 hours before Governor Murphy; Murphy raised the alarm only after flooding and tornados were well underway in the Garden State giving residents and authorities little time to adjust.
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Update: This post was updated to reflect that Jim Sciutto – and not Phil Murphy – made the “seriously” remark cited in the transcript above.
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