Fmr. Gov. Whitman: Trump’s Challenge Will Be Finding a Way of Bringing People Together

Some “never Trumpers” are dialing back their feelings toward the now President-elect following Tuesday’s 2016 election results.

Former Republican Governor of New Jersey Christie Whitman, who said previously she could not get behind the GOP nominee, joined the FOX Business Network to react to Trump’s victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“Obviously I wish him well. Lord, I hope that the rhetoric of last night that he gave at his acceptance speech and in Hillary’s concession speech is how we go forward. That’s what we need desperately. We need to bring the country together,” Whitman said.

According to the former governor, part of the problem was the discord of this year’s historic presidential campaign — one which saw the first woman to win a major party’s nomination and a billionaire businessman with no prior political experience to win the other.

“This has been an extraordinarily divisive campaign with some of the harshest rhetoric and most divisive rhetoric I think we’ve ever heard, and we’ve got to get over that,” Whitman said. “If Donald Trump is going to succeed at what he says he wants to do, he is gonna need to reach out to those people who were not for him.”

Whitman, who also served in the George W. Bush administration, explained what else she would advise the next president to do when he steps into the Oval Office.

“He needs to find out this strike of balance that ensures that while we want to grow our economy – we need to desperately…We have some protections in place to keep us healthy, to keep our environment healthy. We need to readjust those, make sure they’re in the right place. We need not to walk away from them entirely. And that’s going to be his challenge throughout, is finding that way of bringing people together.”

Whitman commented on the possibility of the state’s current governor and Trump supporter, Chris Christie, having a place in the presidential administration.

“I suspect it would be more likely to be Chief of Staff,” Whitman said. “I don’t know if Trump would go ahead given all the Bridgegate fuss and furor that’s been going on that he would risk putting him up for Senate confirmation. It just might be a battle he doesn’t want to fight.”