Josh Gottheimer Asked About New Jersey Gubernatorial Campaign Ad Showing Him Boxing Trump

On Sunday, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) spoke to CNN's Manu Raju about his campaign to be New Jersey Governor.

Transcript

00:00I want to talk about one of the campaign ads that you have run that New Jersey voters are

00:05now seeing across the airwaves made with AI showing you boxing the president. Watch.

00:11In Congress, Gottheimer got the impossible done, passing infrastructure and gun safety laws and

00:16fighting for Jersey to stop Donald Trump's tariffs and chaos. Now he's ready for the big one.

00:22So you're trying to position yourself as the person fighting, but fighting Trump. But this

00:28is a state, as you mentioned before, it's trended to the right. In fact, a 10 point shift to Trump

00:33last year. So if you do win the nomination next week, do you think that message is what swing

00:40voters want to hear that you're fighting Trump? I think two things, Manu. You heard the first

00:47part of what you played, which is that we actually get stuff done, which this president has failed

00:51to do. Right. You know, I helped negotiate and pass the infrastructure bill and a bipartisan gun

00:56safety bill and expand child tax credit to help pay for child care. Those are things people in

01:01Jersey care about. But yeah, they want to know that their governor is going to fight when someone

01:05comes in and messes with them, by the way, no matter who it is. And Trump so far has come in

01:09and messed with our state. When you when you gut Medicaid, when you go after education and the

01:13Department of Education, when you go after things we care about and that we value as a state and as a

01:18people. Yeah, they want to know that we're going to stand up and fight. But obviously,

01:21as I've got a long record of doing, when you want to work with us, we'll sit down and talk to you,

01:26right, and get things done and solve problems. But let me be clear, you mess with us, we're going

01:30to mess with you back. And they want to know that someone's not afraid to fight and stand up for us.