Jerry Brown Calls Trump Wall Proposal 'Absolutely Preposterous'

(Bloomberg) -- California Governor Jerry Brown said Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s idea to build a wall to prevent migrants from crossing the southern U.S. border and have Mexico pay for it is “absolutely preposterous.”

“It would create such tension with our closest neighbor that, probably, a dumber idea I can’t imagine,” Brown said Thursday in an interview in Bloomberg News’s San Francisco bureau.

Brown, who ran for president himself three times, also said he’s “not particularly” interested in a vice-presidential nomination should he be approached by the eventual Democratic nominee. He isn’t supporting any of the current candidates for president and said all of them need to work harder to gain the backing of the American people.

“We have a crisis of governance in the face of an increasingly difficult and dangerous world, and people are upset,” Brown said. “The campaigns and the candidacies are not all that inspiring.”

Brown, 77, is presiding over the world’s seventh-largest global economy, driven by technology companies including Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. and agricultural and manufacturing industries that lead the U.S. Since taking office in 2011, the fourth-term governor has steered the state from repeated budget deficits to surpluses.

Brown declined to weigh in on the fight between Apple and the FBI over unlocking the encrypted smartphone used by terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, who died in a Dec. 2 shootout with law enforcement in San Bernardino, California, following an attack that killed 14 people.

Nuclear Terrorism

With regard to terrorism, Brown said, the threat of nuclear attacks has been missing from the debate.

“The nuclear materials of the world are so widespread and would be so devastating if they were brought to New York or Washington or any other state,” he said. “We have to be prepared to de-fang the terrorists.”

Brown said California has become a leader in combating climate change and stressed that more effort to curb carbon emissions and set policy promoting green energy is needed at the national level, including support from Republicans.

“This is damn serious,” he said. “A number of politicians have their head in the sand, and we have to move forward with China, with the U.S., with Europe and with other countries.”

California is providing a path forward “pending Washington waking up and getting off its dysfunctionality,” he said.

Brown signed a bill in October to double energy efficiency in homes and buildings and require half of the state’s electricity to come from renewable sources such as solar and wind by 2030.

The Bloomberg Television interview with Brown will air at 10:30 a.m. and noon New York time on Friday.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alison Vekshin in San Francisco at [email protected]; Emily Chang in San Francisco at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at [email protected] Jeffrey Taylor, Michael B. Marois