Pennacchio: Governor’s Criticism of President is Hollow Attempt to Rewrite History

New Jersey State Senator Joe Pennacchio today challenged Governor Murphy’s recent criticism of President Trump as an effort to obscure his own costly errors dealing with the coronavirus.

“The Governor said he would have been more aggressive if Trump had been more forthcoming on COVID information,” said Pennacchio. “Murphy is one of only five governors in the nation that forced nursing homes to accept COVID patients, exposing healthcare workers and vulnerable residents to infection. He wants to make the President his scapegoat for his own mistakes.”

“Murphy’s criticism is specious and selective,” Pennacchio said. “When the pandemic hit, the Governor granted himself limitless powers during the emergency. There was nothing the Governor asked for that the President didn’t provide, and some of the assistance from Washington was un-utilized and wasted.”

Pennacchio noted that half of the COVID deaths in New Jersey resulted from the state’s policies forcing facilities to accept virus patients and prohibiting the testing of new residents for COVID.

“The Administration opened prisons and set inmates free so they could escape the potential infection of the virus while the elderly and frail residents of nursing homes were being exposed to it by irresponsible mandates,” Pennacchio said. “The resulting loss of more than 7,000 seniors must be owned by the Governor and cannot be attributed to Washington.”

Pennacchio sponsors legislation calling for the formation of a Senate Select Committee to investigate the Administration’s response to COVID-19, and for the last four months, Senate Republicans have been pressing Democrat leadership to take action.

“Our efforts to uncover the true facts and impacts of state policy during the pandemic have been blocked,” Pennacchio said. “The Governor continues to be shielded from scrutiny by his own emergency powers orders that give him limitless power and makes the Administration exempt from OPRA rules for disclosure.

“It seems the Democrats have circled the wagons to protect the Governor and his Administration,” the Senator concluded. “Will we need Bob Woodward to write a book before we finally get answers to why we had such carnage in our veterans’ homes and nursing homes?”