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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s office offered a beyond-lame excuse Monday after he suggested he was protecting a migrant at his home — and taunted the Trump administration “to try to get her.’’
A rep told The Post that the loose-lipped Jersey leader had been “misinterpreted” and that no such situation had occurred — even though Murphy had dared the feds to come after the migrant.
Murphy had boasted during a weekend interview with a liberal organization that he and wife Tammy had opened their home to a female migrant and challenged the feds to do anything about it — as ICE agents continue to carry out sweeping deportation raids across the country.
“I don’t want to get into too much detail, but there’s someone in our broader universe whose immigration status is not yet at the point that they are trying to get it to and we said, ‘You know what, let’s have her live at our house above our garage,’ ” the Democrat said Saturday.
“And good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her.”
His incendiary comments created a firestorm, forcing a representative to furiously try to walk them back to The Post.
Murphy was just referring to a legal resident who is in his circle of friends and was worried about Trump’s return to the White House, the governor’s rep said.
“No one’s ever lived in the home” under those circumstances that the governor described, the representative insisted.
The rep did not explain why Murphy would dare the Trump administration to go after the woman at his home if she wasn’t there.
His public challenge to the Republican White House was not his only swipe at President Trump during Saturday’s on-stage discussion with Blue Wave New Jersey, a grassroots organization that pushes liberal causes, at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ.
Murphy, an ex-US ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama, appeared to compare the administration to the rise of Nazism in the European country nearly a century ago when warning audience members to gear up for the next four years.
“The Germans in the ’20s and ’30s got tired, they got sick of fighting, and look at the price we paid,” he said.
“We cannot roll over, we cannot stop fighting,” he said to a round of applause. “We need an intensity.”
He then complained about low voter turnout for Democrats “against this guy,” in reference to Trump.
“I mean, my God, it’s not like we’re wondering what he’s gonna be like,” he said. “We know what he’s like, and we can’t let that happen again ever, ever, ever.”
Trump gave Vice President Kamala Harris, his Dem presidential opponent, a scare in the blue Garden State in November when he collected nearly 46% of the vote against her 51% – a massive improvement from his first two White House runs.
In 2020 against Joe Biden, Trump only garnered about 41% of the vote.
