Senator Cory Booker insisted many in his party “want to f***ing fight” as he savaged Democratic colleagues for accommodating Donald Trump, despite the president’s threats to target blue states and districts in funding fights.
The New Jersey Democrat on Tuesday accused senior members of the party of valuing bipartisanship over efforts to push back against Trump’s perceived overreaches.
He and two other senators, both Democrats, attacked each other in dueling floor speeches as the chamber debated passage of two bills involving benefits for law enforcement. Booker’s objection came after he said the Office of Justice Programs, which administers grants through the Justice Department, was withholding funds for programs in so-called “sanctuary cities”, like Booker’s hometown of Newark.
Booker clashed with Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Amy Klobuchar over an amendment that would have prevented the DOJ from blocking those funds. It also would have likely endangered the unanimous consent process, which senators were relying upon to pass the bill, given that it would likely trigger GOP opposition.
Then, in comments to reporters, he slammed his fellow Democrats as “complicit” in the Trump administration’s attempts to bully blue states and districts into line.
“Literally, they were about to be complicit in the very things they say out of the other side of their mouth that they object to. Democrats need to learn to fight and fight him and stop him from hurting people,” he said.
He added to The Independent: “Today, I saw people being complicit with something that is truly undermining the Constitution, the separation of powers and the kind of things that we should be standing up [against].”
Booker didn’t explain why he didn’t object to the bills’ final passage when his amendment failed.
Cortez Masto, meanwhile, maintained her anti-Trump bona fides in a separate conversation with The Independent after the vote, pointing to her work at the DSCC to flip the Senate into Democratic hands in 2020, when her party secured a narrow 50-50 majority, with ties broken by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Mastro said that she was “proven” in “the fight against Donald Trump.”
And she added: “ I chair the DSCC. We flipped the Senate [to] control of the Democrats and pushed back on Donald Trump.
“I am not opposed to taking on the challenges of Donald Trump and bad policies. I do it all the time. The question is, why aren’t most Democrats supporting law enforcement?” the senator asked.
Klobuchar, in her floor speech, took aim at her New Jersey colleague for not bringing up his concerns in committee. But Booker contended to reporters later that the threats were only leveled after the legislation advanced, making Klobuchar’s criticism a moot point.
Booker gained notoriety on the left with a marathon floor speech earlier this year denouncing the Trump administration’s second-term agenda, a speech that broke Senate records. At the same time, he, like other Democrats in the chamber, has faced derision from some in their party for the persisting air of bipartisanship that still permeates part of the chamber, particularly involving the nominations of former senator Marco Rubio to be Trump’s Secretary of State.
His notion that the party is sick and tired of leadership and the strategy of appeasement some Senate Democrats like Chuck Schumer have exhibited when dealing with the new Republican majority is accurate, however.
A national NBC News poll in March found that just 7 percent of Democrats have a very favorable view of their party, with just a quarter having positive views overall. A second poll in May from The Center Square, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, found that three-quarters of Democrats want the party to push back against the president “more often”.
