New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu said Thursday that he believes there are only two governors who have served during his own eight-year term who “really nobody liked.”
The Republican governor slammed the two Democratic lawmakers — former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and California governor Gavin Newsom — during an appearance at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s Reagan Institute Summit on Education (RISE) when he was asked about the difference in dynamics between how governors and congressional lawmakers work.
“I think — look — almost all of the governors get along,” Sununu said. “There’s really only been two, maybe a third, but two real governors that really nobody liked.”
Asked to name names, the New Hampshire governor replied: “Andrew Cuomo. Complete jacka**, no one likes him. And I got to — and I got to be honest, I — no one cares for Gavin. Gavin’s just a prick.”
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, responded to Sununu’s comments in a statement to Fox News: “I’m glad they feel the same way about each other.”
He went on to claim that even Newsom’s fellow Democrats dislike the California governor, but “they won’t tell you out loud.”
“Behind closed doors, they’re like, ‘Oh, God, look who’s coming.’ You know, they all roll their eyes,” he said.
He spoke more favorably of Oregon’s Democratic governor Tina Kotek and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy.
“There is absolutely nothing Tina and I probably agree with politically, but she’s a wonderful person,” Sununu said. “I think she’s — she’s really great. . . . I call her my favorite West Coast governor. You know, Phil Murphy in New Jersey, right? Phil Murphy and I get along great, we really do. He’s got this amazing sense of humor.”
Meanwhile, he criticized the “nonsense” that goes on in Congress.
“Congress has two jobs: They approve or disapprove of a policy. And they approve or disapprove of funding. And that’s it. They don’t design the mental-health system. They don’t design the system for better homeless services or integration of education, or they don’t design anything,” he said.
“I think all governors should be engineers. I think all politicians should be engineers,” said Sununu, who is an engineer himself.
He blasted Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) as a “fool” and suggested she and Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) “do nothing, and they raise a ton of money off it, not just to get themselves reelected, but for the showmanship of that extremism.”
“But they actually don’t functionally do anything, you know, for the betterment of good governance and civics,” he said.
He went on to say he wouldn’t want to serve in Congress and suggested that many lawmakers don’t care to address the country’s biggest issues.
“What’s going to happen in eight years? Social Security is going bankrupt. That is a fact. And there was already a law in place that the Social Security benefits that some folks in this room might be waiting for are going to get cut,” he said. “I think it’s 23 percent — like, that’s in law, that’s happening. Your benefits are being cut. Someone has to fix that, has to stop that.”