It was four years ago tonight, during COVID and the presidential campaign, that a prominent Democrat and his wife visited with the president and first lady at a golf club. Donald Trump then tweeted : “Just finished dinner in Bedminster, New Jersey, with Governor Phil Murphy and his wonderful wife, Tammy. Talked about many things, including the opening of the beautiful Garden State, getting people back to work, and rebuilding America’s infrastructure with projects like the Portal North Bridge, which I have given authorization to proceed!” Trump, then running for reelection, got to appear a bit bipartisan hosting the Democratic governor.
As for Murphy, he left the dinner with something more substantial, as Trump was getting behind a new rail bridge on the Hackensack River feeding passenger trains towards the Hudson River tunnel and Manhattan’s Penn Station. Actually, Trump was only forecasting a coming approval, as a week later, on June 19 , the Federal Transit Administration advanced NJTransit’s $1.8 billion Portal North Bridge project into the engineering phase and qualified for a $766.
5 million grant in the FTA’s Core Capacity program. The final contract between NJT and Uncle Sam for the $766.5 million was signed on Jan.
14, 2021 , a week after Trump’s failed putsch at the Capitol and a week before Joe Biden was sworn into office. That payment of $766.5 million was, and remains, a fraud on the law, as Congress has explicitly required in statute that all such Co.
