Sen. Cory Booker: I Cried After Durbin Told Me About Trump’s ‘Sh*thole’ Comment
President Trump's reference to some African nations as a "sh*thole" infuriated New Jersey Senator Cory Booker so much that he started crying.
"I hurt — when Dirk Durbin called me," Booker said, "I had tears of rage when I heard about this experience in this meeting."
The senator and possible 2020 candidate relayed his emotional reaction while questioning the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen.
Booker attacked Nielsen after she said she didn't recall Trump using this particular vulgarity during last Thursday's meeting.
"You're a threat to this country," Booker told her. "Your silence and your amnesia is complicity."
"For you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues saying," he continued, "I’ve already answered that line of questions, when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because of what they’re worried what happened in the White House, that’s unacceptable to me."
Here's an excerpt from their exchange:
BOOKER: “Excuse me, let me finish.”
NIELSEN: “Happy to.”
BOOKER: “Let me just draw a connection of why that matters. I’m sure you will remember the six words from our president, the six words that he said after Charleston, Virginia, last summer. People marching with tiki torches and hate when he said there are very fine people on both sides. Very fine people on both sides. When the commander-in-chief speaks or refuses to speak, those words just don’t dissipate like mist in the air, they fester. They become poison. They give license to bigotry and hate in our country.
"I know you’re aware of a 2017 GAO report that found, and I quote, out of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right-ring extremist groups were responsible for 73 percent. When I go through the black belt in the south, when I’m in Atlanta, black churches in Newark, they’re concerned about jihadist Islamic terrorism. We watched the twin towers from Newark go down.
"But since 9/11, 85 violent incidents, 73 percent were with people who held bigoted, hateful ideas about minorities. One American killed in Charleston, Virginia, and dozens injured. Nine Americans killed in a church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, by a wheat supremacist. An American killed and another in Kansas after a white supremacist targeted them for their ethnicity saying get out of my country. Six — six Americans killed and four others wounded in Wisconsin where white supremacist targeted individuals for their religion.
"The commander-in-chief in an Oval Office meeting referring to people from African countries and Haitians with the most vile and vulgar language. That language festers when ignorance and bigotry is aligned with power, it’s a dangerous force in our country. Your silence and your amnesia is complicity. Right now in our nation we have a problem. I don’t know of 73 percent of your time is spent on white supremacist hate groups. I don’t know if 73 percent of your time is spent concerned about the people in fear in communities in this country, seek Americans, Muslim Americans, black Americans.
"The fact pattern is clear of the threats in this country. I hurt — when Dirk Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about this experience in this meeting and for you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues saying, I’ve already answered that line of questions, when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because of what they’re worried what happened in the White House, that’s unacceptable to me.”
