Welcome to the ticket, I'm Isaac Dauver. This pandemic is a disaster. And normally in disasters, the federal government takes the lead. But not this White House. It's been largely up to the

governors and many of them have become nationally known for their very public responses

which have included shooting down ideas out of Washington. It's been governors like Cuomo, the

wine, Newsom, Whitmer, whom we had on the podcast a few weeks ago. But the state, the

second highest number of infections in deaths is New Jersey and the governor there, Phil Murphy,

has taken a different approach.

He's been less combative in public and he's had a much smoother relationship

throughout with President Trump. Besides having to manage this

crisis Murphy just emerged from his own health scan. He found out about the first

COVID case in his state while in the recovery room after getting a tumor removed from his kidney. As he faces the decisions

around when to relax stay-at-home orders Murphy comes at it as a former Wall Street banker

who knows the economic cost as well as the obvious human toll.

And about that relationship with Trump, you'll hear that in the middle of our interview we had

to stop for a bit because the president was calling him on his cell phone right there.

You might hear the cell phone ringing the background a little toward the beginning.

Take a listen.

Governor Phil Murphy,

Murphy, thanks for being here on the ticket.

Isaac, thanks for having me on the ticket.

Good to be with you.

Yeah, so right before this hit, like right before you were in the hospital for a surgery to remove a tumor on your

kidney. It went well and that's good news. But I'm wondering what that perspective

...