Sununu: Voters focused more on nation's challenges than Trump trials
May 8—MANCHESTER — The challenges posed by illegal immigration, inflation, a lack of affordable housing and access to mental health are more important to voters than the criminal trials dogging former President Donald Trump, Gov. Chris Sununu said Wednesday.
"Look, no one knows where all of that is going to go and, by the way, it's not going very well for the prosecution right now," Sununu began about the Trump trials.
"You know what keeps Americans awake at night? Not being able to pay their bills, not being able to afford the rent... wages have gone up but it is not outpacing inflation."
During a wide-ranging conversation with the New England Council, Sununu predicted most voters who agreed with Sununu and backed Republican presidential challenger Nikki Haley ultimately will support Trump this fall, whether Haley campaigns for Trump or not.
Sununu said he exchanges text messages frequently with the former South Carolina governor, who he said is spending more time with her family now that her husband is home from a National Guard deployment to Africa.
"She doesn't owe anyone an explanation for anything," Sununu said of Haley's decision not to endorse Trump to this point. "She has earned the right to do whatever she wants."
Sununu defended his decision to endorse Trump and recalled his contentious exchange on that topic with ABC-TV's George Stephanopoulos.
"I challenge George and the rest of the journalists out there, do your job, go ask the real story about what is happening in America... I am 51-49 for Trump and that's how I vote," Sununu said.
Trump's conduct in the run-up to the uprising at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was "horrible," Sununu said, but he's convinced another four years with President Joe Biden would be worse for the country.
"He was judging me and what he was really doing is judging a lot of Americans that Jan. 6 was a disqualifier," Sununu said of Stephanopoulos.
Trump "incited it, he was a part of it, but that is not a disqualifier for me. I am not out there campaigning for Trump," Sununu said. "I am trying to get these elites to see what is really happening in American because it is harming this nation."
Biden's attempt to cast the economy in a positive light is not resonating with voters, he said.
"I literally don't think they can do the math. America is tired of being gaslighted, 'You are fine,' Bidenomics is working," Sununu said.
Sununu: You have to vote
The worst thing that could happen would be for the choice between two flawed candidates to cause low turnout, he said.
"I don't care who you are for, you have to vote. I've heard people say why not decline to vote? I have never heard anything more un-American," Sununu said.
Biden-Harris New Hampshire Communications Director Marisa Nahem said Sununu can't defend Trump's record.
"After Donald Trump tanked our economy, leaving office with the worst jobs record since the Great Depression, President Biden is delivering for New Hampshire families on the issues that matter most, from protecting reproductive health care to lowering costs for families to capping the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors," Nahem said in a statement.
"Now, Trump is pushing plans to ban abortion and criminalize doctors, slash Social Security and Medicare, and raise health care costs by thousands of dollars for families while sticking hardworking Granite Staters with the bill — that's what's keeping New Hampshire families up at night."
Sununu, who chose not to give a speech, spent more than an hour answering questions from New England Council President Jim Brett and people in the audience at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
He was his usual blunt self, speaking about good relations he has with most governors from both political parties, such as Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, who Sununu called a "great governor, really good guy."
On Thursday, Sununu is scheduled to travel to Illinois and appear at an event with Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who Sununu said is a pleasure to be with though their politics are very different.
Sununu did not include the California governor in this friendship club.
"Nobody likes Gavin Newsom. He used to be quite friendly, but he just turned into this... governor from La La Land," Sununu said.
The four-term governor also joked about writing a memoir after he leaves office at year's end.
"I'm going to write a book. It's going to be called, 'Never Buy a Book from a Politician,' by Gov. Chris Sununu, because it's all B.S.," Sununu said.
A short time later, Sununu said he could decide to write a book about his optimism for the future of the national GOP, post-Trump.
