Monday on MSNBC, “All In,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic by accusing him of “injuring the soul” of the country.
Booker said, “Look, I just don’t think we’re as different as some of our politicians want to make us feel in this country. We all have a lot of concerns right now, as you said. Most Americans want us to err on the side of public health and safety but understand the urgency. We understand businesses are fearful. They spent their lives building in the tourist towns like Cape May, and the small mom and pop restaurants in New Jersey. There is an urgency to save those businesses, but this is about health. This is about science. This is about data. It’s not about our opinion or politics. It’s about what is the best way to get this country back to business, because if we open up too early, and we have a second wave, I’m telling you right now it’s going to be more damming to our businesses and to our economy and on top of that, our health. So we’ve just go to stop this nonsense. Chris, this is what makes this being a moment, that we have the most uniquely unqualified president in our history, at a time we want someone to give us like a fireside chat or to appeal to malice towards none, charity towards all, at a time be want to be called together for common cause and common purpose, we have a president that is doubling down on demeaning and degrading and divisiveness, who is injuring the soul of our country, turning us against each other, tweeting out the most obnoxiously damaging unimaginable tweets like ‘Liberate states.’ This is not about his petty culture war. This is about the strength and health and well being of a nation.”
He continued, “Look, in a time when this administration is fighting transparency and oversight, the one thing that’s been utterly transparent from the beginning is that Donald Trump cares about himself. He tells us that fact. You know, he didn’t want to let people off of a cruise ship in the beginning because it would hurt the numbers in how he looks. This is a guy that tweets out very transparently that everything is about him, what people say about him. Is this governor being nice to him? Are they plotting to get him? This is not about him. This is about the greatest national crisis in generations and how we are 5% of the globe’s population, but because of a failure of leadership, we have roughly a third of the cases on the planet Earth right now.”
He added, “I am not going to let this crisis be defined by Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, who, in my opinion, are failing in their leadership and their ability to drive the common, pull the country, pull the Senate together.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN