Governor Phil Scott speaks with the media after casting his ballot in Berlin on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Photo by Josh Kuckens/VTDiggerGov. Phil Scott has made it clear that he doesn’t like President-elect Donald Trump — but he also isn’t sounding the alarm as Trump prepares to take the oath of office again in January.“The results of the national election raises concerns and uncertainty for many because we don’t know what President Trump will do,” Vermont’s governor said at a Wednesday afternoon press conference in Montpelier — his first since Trump’s victory last week. “For the sake of our country, we need to tamp down the division and fear, and we need to at least give him the opportunity to do better and do the right thing.”What exactly Trump will do when he reenters the White House, Scott said, is unknown. He questioned whether the incoming administration will fully implement the Republican’s campaign promises, such as his pledges to once again pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords and deport upwards of 11 million undocumented immigrants.“There’s a lot of talk about a lot of things that he will do or not do, and we’ve seen a lot of the rhetoric throughout the campaign, but that’s typically what happens during a campaign,” Scott said. “And then we have to wait and see what really does happen.”Scott — who was elected to his first gubernatorial term in 2016, when Trump won his first presidential term — has been a vocal critic of the former president’s for years despite their sharing a party label. In both 2020 and in this year’s election, the moderate Republican publicly voted for Trump’s two most recent Democratic opponents: President Joe Biden in 2020 and Vice President Kamala Harris last week.But despite the outcome not being his preferred one, Scott said on Wednesday that Trump “won a fair election, and in the end, it wasn’t close, and we have to respect the will of the voters.”And while other governors of blue-leaning states are floating contingency plans to prepare for a second Trump administration, Scott on Wednesday pumped the brakes.READ MORE “Like I did in my first term, I won’t hesitate to protect Vermonters and our rights if that becomes necessary,” Scott said. “But if those of us who didn’t vote for him immediately go into attack mode, that’s only going to further divide us. And we desperately need to heal our fractured country.”Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democratic, called a special session of that state’s legislature in December to preemptively pass legislation to bolster the state’s defenses against the incoming Trump administration. And this week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, both Democrats, announced the formation of the nonpartisan Governors Safeguarding Democracy group. (No Republicans thus far have joined, according to Reuters.)At Wednesday’s press conference, Scott threw cold water on the efforts of his Democratic colleagues — and suggested they may do more harm than good.He pointed to Newsom and Pritzker as presidential hopefuls and said, “I don’t know if you connected the dots, but I think they’re running in 2028, right?” And on the Governors Safeguarding Democracy group, he said, “I don’t think there’s a single governor in office today that doesn’t want to protect democracy.”“Down the road, if we see that this is needed and it’d be helpful and so forth, I’ll readdress it,” Scott said. “But at this point in time, I’m not ready to jump on this. It feels too political to me.”Scott said Vermonters shouldn’t expect him to tamp down his criticism of Trump when it’s called for, saying, “I’m not going to be any different than I’ve been before. I call them like I see them, and I did that in the first four years of the Trump administration.”But Scott didn’t appear overly concerned that Trump would retaliate against him — or the state of Vermont, as a whole — for his criticism.“I’m hoping that he will spend more time trying to bring the country together and trying to improve on some of our shortcomings and less time on retribution, because it’s just a waste of time,” Scott said.Read the story on VTDigger here: With Donald Trump set to reenter the White House, Gov. Phil Scott adopts a cautious posture.