Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) said on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that President Donald Trump’s “rank racism” and “demagoguery” had to go.
At a rally held on Monday, Trump said, “Suburbia has got to wake up, because, uh, if they get in, you know who’s in charge, you know who’s in charge of the program, Cory Booker, Cory Booker. So I think, uh, the suburban women and suburban men and husbands and wives and everybody, you better get smart.”
Host Andrea Mitchell asked Booker to respond.
Mitchell said, “Senator Booker, I know you as a Stanford grad, a Rhodes scholar, former mayor of Newark. I don’t know of anything you’re doing right now in the administration that involves invading the suburbs.”
Booker said, “It’s deeper than that. I grew up in the Northern Bergen County suburbs, an incredible community, highest-ranked public schools, beautiful suburbs that frankly, my family was kept out of. My mom and dad were denied the ability to buy a house in those suburbs. It wasn’t until activists, a significant number of white activists that had white couples posing as my parents, who put a bid on a house that my parents moved in. By the time I was 18-year-old, I was an honors student, and the older I got, the better I was. It is so insulting to the struggles of many people like my family who overcame this same kind of rank racism that he’s spouting that way. To use me as a bogeyman, as a scary figure—this is one of those times that social media actually has been a gift to me because I watched the way people responded as many people volunteered to have me move into their neighborhoods. Also suggesting that I shovel their snow. I’m tired, I really am exhausted, at the end of this man’s time as president, he has pushed every racially divisive nerve possible in this country.”
He continued, “He has tried to pit people against each other, whipping up fear, making Americans afraid of American, that kind of demagoguery has got to go. But again, complaining about it is not enough. If we want him gone, it’s not enough to hope for it, to pray for it, or even just to talk about it. We’ve got to work for it. This is the most important 40-some days in the history of our life when it comes to our politics, and the referendum of this election is not a referendum on who Donald Trump is. It’s who we are going to be, what’s the character of our country, what do we want to see in our leadership.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.