PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee was “in the room” Friday when President Donald Trump told the governor of Maine that she’d better heed his ban on transgender athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports – or “you’re not going to get federal funding.”
Describing the president’s remarks as “a little bit over the top,” McKee told The Providence Journal during an end-of-day telephone interview that Gov. Janet Mills, a former Maine attorney general, didn’t need anyone rising to her defense, saying she “knows how to take care of herself.”
It went like this, according to multiple news reports:
“I’m complying with state and federal law,” Mills said.
“We are the federal law. You better do it, because you’re not going to get federal funding,” Trump said.
McKee said: “I certainly support any governor that appears to get bullied by anyone and any threat that you’re not going to get federal aid just because … [you are] not on the same page on some form of a policy.”
The clash was one of the more dramatic – and widely reported – moments in Trump’s meeting with a roomful of Republican and Democratic governors for whom the gathering at the White House was part of a multiday National Governors Association meeting. But McKee said Mills was not the only Democratic governor Trump called out.
The stand-alone Democratic Governors Association issued this statement Friday night: “This morning, governors from across the country visited the White House hoping for a constructive discussion about how to bring down costs, strengthen our response to natural disasters, and ensure we can keep delivering for residents of our states.
“However, what started as a productive conversation with members of the Cabinet quickly devolved into what the American people hate most about our politics, when President Trump made clear that he had no intention of using our meeting to find common ground.
“Instead, he chose to point fingers at Democrats in the room, engage in ugly personal attacks and threats against our colleagues, and push unfounded conspiracy theories.”
McKee’s takeaways
McKee, meeting Trump for the first time, said not everything he heard from Trump Cabinet members and others, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, was unwelcome.
During small-group meetings with the secretaries of Energy, Housing and Treasury, McKee said he had a chance to “outline the things that we think are really important to Rhode Island.”
He said Miller “was talking about the bureaucracy on the federal level and how do we reduce that bureaucracy … to help the states.”
McKee called that potentially welcome news: “Anytime you can cut down the bureaucracy and the timeframes and the regulation on the federal level, that helps the states. I thought that was good. … And the president reinforced that.”
Asked if Trump said anything particularly concerning to him, McKee said: “Not that we don’t already know.”
“I mean, he’s clearly not a fan of the wind [energy] industry. … So I think that when he says that wind doesn’t work, that’s a direct attack on our economy, and we have to speak up on it.”
McKee said he made the case to the secretary of energy, and shared his concern that “some of the things you’re talking about right now … [in] the drill baby drill category, how do we know in four years that that’s not going to get pulled out from under.”
Asked if he sensed in his conversations with Republican governors that any of them had any concerns of their own about what Trump was doing, McKee said: “No, I think that they’re very optimistic.”
During a talk with Oklahoma’s Republican governor, J. Kevin Stitt, the vice chair of the National Governors Association, McKee said he said: “Defend our economy just like you have to defend your economy. … It would be good if we kind of partnered to do it.”
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Trump, Democratic governors clash at White House meeting
