IHIP News - Live with Senator Booker

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

Sen. Cory Booker joins us to discuss how to combat this fascist government. Pre-order our new book, join our Patreon Cult, and more by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcast. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Happy Sunday, everyone, and welcome to IHIP News. The Lord rests on Sunday, but Pumps and I do not. No, we are not going to take a break because, as one might say, the house is on fire. It is. In a few minutes, we're going to be joined by Senator Cory Booker. So everybody join the chat, and if you have any questions for the Senator, pop those in there. Let's talk briefly. I read an article this morning that Kash Patel, as we know, is a total nut and is now at the FBI. And he has told everybody in the FBI to ignore Elon Musk's letters. Really? Yeah. So that is interesting. Are we going to have a power struggle? Well, and then some podcasts resurfaced where Kash Patel had been bashing Elon in the past.

And so I just think there's going to be a lot of trouble when you have all of these dysfunctional, broken people with unaddressed inner childhood trauma. What I also like to call is the cabinet of dipshits, dangerous dipshits. The personalities, they're not always going to be on the same page at the same time. And you're going to have some people that want to play hero and want to jockey themselves to be the big dick in charge. And so it's going to be interesting to watch over the next, I would say, 60, 90 days as who is the point person. Right now, it seems like Musk is, even over Trump. So it's going to be interesting to see how all of the chips fall. Well, and you also have people, particularly Elon Musk, and they want to be number one in Trump's eyes. They want to be number one boyfriend. And so the fight amongst them, like you said, who's going to be the one in Trump's eyes. They want to be number one boyfriend.

And so the fight amongst them, like you said, who's going to be the star? Who's going to stand out most? Who's going to be the cruelest on Trump's behalf? This narcissism just, it can't all live together. So the economy is already starting to completely destabilize. And for a lot of people, we live in a red state, viewer, and a lot of people that I know that were trying to justify their Trump vote, it was inflation and the economy. And now we see that everything that he's doing is inflationary. And the stock market is going to start correcting very quickly. But everybody needs to remember stocks like

stability. And when I think of convicted felon Donald Trump, I can think of a lot of things to say. And one of the top would be unstable. Right. Yeah. Markets and big business, Wall Street as a whole, it's a futures business. It's stability. It's how is this going to play out? With Trump, you don't know because he is an agent of chaos. Elon Musk, agent of chaos. I also think he's an agent of Russia. Well, I don't think there's any question. I think we're past the point of disputing that now. Well, I would think that, but I feel like that should be the top headline everywhere, and it's not. It's interesting to me how people, he's changed the minds of so many people that Putin is our ally.

Putin has changed the minds. Correct, not Trump. He bought Tucker Carlson and other right-wing podcasters, and it's rumored that he bought Trump many years ago. And Elon Musk and Putin all have the same ideas, which is to dismantle democracy. Because at the end of the day, these oligarchs are very scared of the public. Right. Well, they know that they're a minority. And how do you silence them? You take all of their money, all of their power. And I was reading an article we have. I think we have.

Do we have to give him a second? You want to stay on just for a second? Hey, Senator, are you ready? I'm in. I'm in. We threw you right in life. We just threw you right at the wolves. I am so sorry.

No worries. Are you kidding me? No worries whatsoever. I'm just rushed back from the studio. I just did meet the press and I'm very excited to be here with you. We're so excited to have you. And I was joking with somebody on your staff and he wrote, if it's Sunday, it's I've had it. And in Trump's America, I think the title of our podcast has never been more appropriate because this is a shit show of epic proportions. It is painful to watch, but I want to jump in and I want to talk to you about something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Do you remember in 2016, McCarthy and then Speaker of the House Paul Ryan were on a hot tape talking about that they believed that Trump was on Putin's payroll. And then they had to come

back out of that and say, oh, no, no, we were joking. We were just joking about that. But clearly they weren't because they said, hey, this stays in here and this is family talk. And then we had Hillary Clinton in 2016 that was like, he's totally a puppet of Putin. And now we see this president of the United States do everything to appease Vladimir Putin. And I was wondering for the longest time, why are they after Canada? And it dawned on me that Justin Trudeau said under oath that Vladimir Putin pays Tucker Carlson. And then all of a sudden Trump's in and it's like, ta-da, Canada is going to be our 51st state. And I feel like we're not freaking out enough about this, Senator. And I want your take on this. Well, I don't mean to add to your sense of freak out,

but there is a world order that was established after World War II that we've been enjoying the fruits of for a very long time. And sort of prescient people of both parties understood that the time of individual powers invading other nations just because they're bigger and stronger of the authoritarian style of leadership had to go. And what had to replace that world order is a collection of nations that share ideals that could stop us from ever tumbling back into the kind of fascist totalitarian world where we had these global conflicts. And we've enjoyed that for a long time. But yet what we see with Trump, excuse me, what we see with Putin, who has been talking a lot, not just about Ukraine. Remember, he invaded South Ossetia, he invaded

Georgia, he invaded Crimea. There's been a number of nations that he's invaded. And the reason why Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania spend so much money on military defense is because he talks about those countries. We know this from Xi and what he's doing with Taiwan and threatening Taiwan, that there is an authoritarian world that wants to go back to might makes right. Now comes Donald Trump, who doesn't understand that in the post-World War II period, we were some of the greatest investors in Japan and Germany, the countries that attacked us, not for some transactional thing like Germany, we want your critical minerals, Japan, we want a 10% stake in your auto industries. We knew that those countries recovering would help the global economy, which would open up markets for the United States of America, understanding the second and third order effects of peace and global world rules. Now comes Trump, who loves dictators, who loves strong men, who is creating a world that makes Xi and Putin very happy. So when Trump says things like, we want Canada to be the

51st state, we're going to take Greenland, and a reporter asks them, well, would you use, or would you pull off the table using economic or military force? And he says no. He is now doing exactly what these other folks, these totalitarian or authoritarian dictators want. They want a world order where might makes right. And that's what Trump is doing. The awful things he's saying about Zelensky, stunningly shocking things that he started this war straight out of Putin's talking points. The reality that he is now someone that is saying the only way we'll stay in this is not loyalty to our NATO countries or protection of the world order, protection of the global rules. But the only reason why we'll stay in this is if you give us in a transactional way rights to your minerals, pay us back. It is a complete rejection of what we have seen since the 1940s through Democrat and

Republican presidents and preserving a democratic world order. And now it's a guy who is catering towards dictators, not just in his loving of Putin and influence with Putin, but more even with his own style of governance, which says we are a big, strong America. We're going to make other countries bow to their knees for us. And we're going to threaten to take over the Panama Canal, threaten to take over Greenland, threaten even our most valuable trading partner, Canada, not understanding that we are allies and we do better when we stand together. Okay. I feel like we're kind of playing two games here. If you and Nancy Pelosi and let's say Chuck Schumer were talking about Barack Obama on Putin's payroll, they would

move at such lightning speed. There would be so many committees. Fox News would hyperventilate. I don't know if this country has enough ERs that could treat the panic attacks that they would have. And then we always, as Democrats, we assume the right thing is going to prevail. And so we assumed with Trump, we assumed, oh, he'll never get reelected again. And all these four years come back and then here he is. And there are all these roads lead to this man being compromised by Russia. And is the Democratic Party prepared to say, we think this MFR is compromised by Vladimir Putin? It is obvious. And you've seen, Senator, more than I have,

because you have all these security clearances and all this cool with the u.s government i'm just piecing it together over here in this blood-red oklahoma city and i think putin has him by the balls it's the only thing that makes sense well remember he was impeached literally for trying to extort Vladimir, support Zelensky in that first contest between the two of them. I understand what you're saying. There is smoke there. literally has gotten paid by Russia linked organizations that the Judiciary Committee did not do its due diligence to expose. So there is a lot of problematic influence. And by the way, Russia knows they cannot beat America tank for tank or aircraft carrier for aircraft carrier. The way they go about doing what they do to undermine our democracy is subverting it, is literally finding

ways through RT and others to pay people in our country to put forth Russian propaganda. So everything you're saying is right. I want to scratch at one thing that you're saying that I hear a lot is this is what the Republicans would do. Why aren't we doing it? And I think it's really important to play this out. And this gives me an opportunity. I'm one of these believers that we fight. I came up in politics, literally an Oscar nominated documentary about my first big election that then would go on to lose in the Oscars to a movie called March of the Damn Penguins. But I'm a vegetarian, a vegan, actually. But I make an exception now for penguin meat, Morgan Freeman. But that documentary that I was in was called Street Fight. And it covered the tough urban politics that I had to fight my

way to beat a powerful machine and finally become mayor and be able to create transformative change. And so I always tell people, we have to fight. We have to use every tactic available to us. But one of the things I said all the time when I was back in those days is, but we can never become that which we are against. And so I want to say right now, this is a moment where Democrats need to do so much more than we're doing now, that there is a deficit of leadership, of courage, of creative protest. And I'm not just talking about elected Democrats. I'm saying all of us have a responsibility when our country is on the line, when our way of life is being challenged to step forward and do more, stand more.

Here in this Black History Month, watch the incredible leaders, many whose names have faded a bit, like Ida B. Wells, in the middle of the worst imaginable government oppression, the fall of Reconstruction, lynching throughout the South. Governmental leaders were being pulled out of their offices, beat and lynched in the streets, and an oppressive totalitarian authoritarian regime was settling into the South. She was one of these truth tellers. She would be seen as a social media influencer today. But what she did is she used pamphlets back then to expose the hypocrisy, to expose the violence, to expose everything was happening, so much so that they came after her, raided her offices. She had to flee to New York. If you look at the creative protesters of our past about how we got to where we are, they were relentless fighters, but they never allowed themselves to become that which

they were against. So the Republicans, to me, you're right. There are things that they would do through their propaganda platforms. Fox News is like a state-owned propaganda machine at times with people there that I can't believe the things, the lack of critical examination they have. While we go on MSNBC as Democrats, it's definitely an independent group that, like you guys do, that pokes at us rightfully. That's what the First Amendment was about, the press keeping us in line. I just don't want us to ever compromise our values. And the last example I'll give you of this is I was running for a stage when I was running for president. I'm about to jump up at a town

hall in Iowa. And there was a big guy at the bottom of the stage. I'm a big guy, former tight end for Stanford. And he's like cheering me on as I get closer to him. And then right when I see him, he yells at me, he goes, dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face. And I look at him and I go, dude, that's a felony. And I laughed with him and I jumped up on the stage and I said, look, the most courageous, effective activists I've ever seen were the protesters in Alabama. Here we're coming up to the 60th anniversary of the Edmund Pettus Bridge March. And I said, we beat people like Bull Connor, fascist-like, authoritarian, vicious, violent leader, not because we brought bigger fire hoses and bigger dogs than he had, but because we had artists of activism that woke up

the conscience of a country and got millions of people who were sitting on the sidelines to get on the field. The reason why Birmingham segregation fell was because those bystanders, those people who were sitting back and doing nothing, got involved. Thousands of people after their creative protests poured into Birmingham. And the city that said segregation would never fail fell within 12 days. The challenge we have right now in this movement, and I'm already seeing it, Republican Congress people, town halls, people starting to come out. I'm already seeing it in the last two weeks, Donald Trump's approval ratings are falling now like a stone. I've

already seen it in our ability to save healthcare and our ability, even in the early days of this Trump administration, to stop them from indiscriminately cutting federal funding for programs like veterans benefits and Medicaid. The biggest challenge we have on the left is getting more people to stop being witnesses to what's going on and becoming activists. We don't have to become- I want to jump in here really quick. Please. I'm sorry.

I went on too long. No, no, no. Senator Booker, I can listen to you forever. And as you talk about the way activism worked in the past, I agree with you. But the media landscape has changed. And I can sit and listen to a Democrat give 10 minute long, nuanced answers Democrats like you say something's up with Donald Trump and Putin. And I'm saying it clear. And you have to start speaking in some soundbites because we all have ADD the entire world. It's not just an American problem because we're all addicted to these phones. And what's going to fire up your base is using very strong language. And it's not playing the way they're playing,

but it's saying what you're seeing is happening to you. What you're seeing, the dismantling of the United States government, it is happening. And this is a moment Donald Trump and everybody he is surrounded by seems to be more loyal to Vladimir Putin than they are to the United States and the Constitution. And we've got to get in the streets. We've got to get on social media and we've got to fight. And I think we've got to get on social media, and we've got to fight. And I think that's what's missing from the Democratic Party, because we all like to speak historically and nuance. And listen, you speak my love language.

I love it. But I think we have to toughen it up, grow some things, and pardon my language here, but I think the Democrats need to take on fuck you politics and drop the integrity politics. And in saying fuck you, it's fuck you for fucking our country up. That's what we need to hear. We need it from you all. That's going to get us out in these cold streets and marching when we see it from Democratic leadership. And we are begging. I mean, begging, Senator. But why do you position that as counter to integrity? Fuck you, politics, righteous rage. I can go from Malcolm X to Medgar Evers. I mean, the people I most, they got upset. You could feel their passion in their heart. And so, yeah, I agree with you.

Sound bites. They are making you less safe. They're making your air travel less safe. They're making your vulnerability to the next pandemic more possible. They are the party that is making this country vulnerable to all different types of crises. Things like that, that factually that hit people home. Wait a minute. My kids are more dangerous when I send them to school, to school shooters. Wait a minute. My healthcare is on the line. Wait a minute. My food prices are going up. I agree with you. It's one of the reasons why I spend so much time digitally creating content. I know what cuts through. That is not contrary, ultimately, to the idea of virtue and integrity. Because what our country needs is not for Dems to win, but for America to win. And we have got to begin to call people to not higher ground, lower ground.

We've got to call people to get it right about what America stands for and expose these people for what they are. They are folks who have authoritarian tendencies that want to tear down our democracy and replace it with strongman government, tear away our fundamental rights, the rights of the press, the rights of free speech, the rights of free assembly. These are the things that Donald Trump attacked in his last term, didn't get it right. And now he's coming after your basic freedoms from the ability to control your body to your ability to say what you want to and still know that they can't fire you indiscriminately for holding political views different than theirs. I have a question kind

of in related to that, like having watched Elon Musk over the past 30 days, if it were in a movie, I wouldn't believe it. I would think that's not true. Now he's, you know, doing his acts and really he hasn't saved the government any money to this point. He's just slashed people's, you know, aid, cancer research, veterans hotlines. Over the weekend, he posts on Twitter that federal employees will lose their job if they can't give him a, what have you done for me lately type situation. What can we do to stop Elon Musk? Because I know the courts are trying, but that might be a year or two before that really sinks in. How do we stop this? Because in my mind, Elon Musk is more dangerous than Donald Trump at this point.

So we stop him in two fundamental ways. The first, you've said it, what they are doing is illegal. It is violating separation of powers. It is violating civil service laws. It is violating our constitution. And just like, again, I hate pulling from American history, which is black history, is the NAACP legal defense front. Before he became a Supreme Court justice, we knew that there were these incredible leaders that were fighting in every single way, Thurgood Marshall and others, to beat and win in the courts. That's how we got Brown versus Board of Education. But you're right, that can take months and sometimes even longer, although we're getting a lot of injunctive relief already from birth rate citizenship to

Elon's ability to just indiscriminately go into people's private records. But the most powerful way we stop, I've started to see the signs of it happening. When a Republican congressperson goes to his districts and holds town hall, districts that he won by, that Trump won by 20%, and you have a guy stand up and say, I am a veteran, lifelong Republican, and the way he is taking a chainsaw to my resources, my healthcare, my VA benefits is wrong, that's when we start winning. And so activism, I'm sorry, I know this, we've had to march for LGBTQ rights, we've had to march for women's rights, we've had to march for civil rights, we've had to march for voting rights. But that's the truth of this country. I remind people, we did not get the Civil Rights Act because one day Strom Thurmond came to the Senate floor and said,

I've seen the lie. Let those Negro people have the right to vote. No, we got it because people demanded it. Change does not come from Washington. It comes to Washington. Look at every major victory we've had for the rights of this country. And so if you think this is going to be easy, history has shown nothing, no right, no privilege in this nation has ever come without sweat, tears, and sometimes, unfortunately, with the beatings we saw of protesters in the past with blood. And so this is going to be a movement politics. And a movement is what saved our health care in the last Trump administration. We didn't have the votes. Democrats didn't have the votes. But when people came out, the little lobbyists, folks in their wheelchairs, throwing themselves

in the gears of government. Suddenly, we were able to get three votes to stop them from what they're doing. I promise you, I promise you the thin, narrow edge they have in the House of Representatives, that thin, narrow edge with at least 10 to 12 House members that are Republicans that know their election is in a year, in 18 months from now, a little over 18 months, know that they have to win reelection, their loyalty, their loyalty is to themselves first. And they will start voting different if they see that their own constituency, including independents and Republicans, are coming after them. So we've all got to get into the

movement mentality here, including us. And you said it, you put it on the line, you Dagnab Democrats. This is what I'm doing for my caucus now is trying to teach them or get more of them to be communicating in the kind of things that break through the noise and can be seen. And I'm measuring this, this may be too much details, but my caucus in their content creation and their partnerships, you were here for us the morning after in the Senate. These partnerships we have with influencers like you has already tens of millions of more views on Democratic senators content than I saw beforehand because we're learning the modern tools of communication, activism and organizing. OK, I just have a few suggestions. Please, please. I think when you all are speaking to us because we feel very helpless and we feel like everything that you just said assumes

that the other side is going to honor the rule of law. And from what I've seen, when you have Pam Bondi's DOJ say, oh, we're just going to drop charges against Eric Adams because it's a quid pro quo. That's unprecedented. So that assumes some things. So we need to hear you say, these people are criminals. They're actively breaking the law. What you're seeing is happening. That's going to motivate us to all of our followers to get behind you. You know, I feel like everybody's kind of mad that we got this far, but we did get this far and we have to fight like hell to get this man in check somehow. And I don't know that I have a whole lot of faith in the Supreme Court. I don't know that I have faith in the administration to honor any judicial rulings, considering they would send out the

federal marshals to do that. And the federal marshals are going to be controlled by Pam Bondi, who bizarrely said the other day she's been issuing executive orders, which she can't even do that. That's not even legal. But I think really blunt acknowledgments to what we're seeing and that fuck you breed of politics. And I think it is having integrity. I agree with you in saying, fuck you for coming at our constitutional rights. Fuck you for trying to wreck our country. And all of these layoffs are starting to hit red states. And I'll give you an example.

My brother has a guy that works for him part-time because his wife works for the IRS. She had insurance, pension. This is in Oklahoma City. And they're triple Trumpers, meaning all three times. These are triple Trumpers. I mean, Tucker Carlson, Freebase, Fox News, the whole nine. She gets laid off. He calls my brother, wants a full-time job back. So it's starting to hit around to where, you know, a lot of us don't really want to reach out to them. They're going to be reaching out to us and saying, oh shit, we screwed up. And so I, I feel like the only thing that's missing because we're, we dropped two times a day and we're in the comment sections all the time is, I mean, and I think you've got it in you, Senator Booker, but it's more direct.

What you're seeing is illegal. This guy is clearly compromised by Russia. I mean, hell, Kevin McCarthy is saying it back in 2017 on tape. I mean, come on. I mean, we all know all of these policies every single day. One person wakes up so happy and that's a very weakly positioned Vladimir Putin. And because of everything that Trump has done, it has strengthened his position and he hasn't had to fire one missile over here to the United States. It's all psychological warfare. So the only thing I

want to say, because too much agreement kills a conversation, because everything you want to say, I want to snap over here. I know, I know, I know. But I want to just challenge you on one thing that you said, which is that this is unprecedented. I listened to the stories of my mom and her activists, friends in the civil rights movement. Because remember, my mom went to college in the days that black HBCUs were leading the efforts. Their fears and terror, how they were being terrorized by the FBI, the stories about people like Fred Hampton, where he was arguably murdered in his bed by government agents, what they did to Martin Luther King. This is a distant past. This is my parents

telling me stories of how government agencies were used to suppress and undermine them. My family literally had to get a white couple to pose as them to buy the house I grew up in because the laws of this country were targeting individuals and oppressing their basic rights. So I hear this idea, but I don't forget what got me to be the fourth black person. I'm only the fourth black person popularly elected to the United States Senate. Only number four. Senator Booker, you know what scares me about this is white people have been so privileged. I don't know that as a group of people, we have that kind of fight in us. I hate to say that.

I hate to say that, but I'm on TikTok and on Instagram and I see these black influencers and I agree with them. They're like, look, we showed up in record numbers. We did our job. We're not joining you guys. He's your problem. And I get their fatigue. I have empathy for their fatigue.

And I feel like as a person who grew up in white America, white privileged America, I'm realizing we're all sitting around thinking this problem is going to self-correct because nobody's ever really dicked us over like this before. But if you're black, that's in your DNA. You fought that hard your whole entire life. And it is phenomenal. And you had to work so much harder to get to where you are. I worry about the tenacity of white people in this fight.

I do. And that's why we need you guys to motivate us. Use some fighting words. And I agree with you on the short fighting words. And I hear you, like I got mad. My staff sees me sometimes walk off an interview and say, if I had one more person to ask me about, oh, the Democratic Party is losing black men. And I just want to scream, if the rest of the country voted for Democrats the way that the rates of black men did, Donald Trump would have lost by 20 points. Totally.

And so I get infuriated about how much historical amnesia we've had. Every right that we enjoy from labor rights to civil rights to women's rights. And again, I feel like the African-American leadership in that is often forgotten and what we had to endure. But I just wanna say that the simplest thing I can say right now, begging everybody, is to get out of this atomized thinking about what race or gender, what have you, and get back into just understanding how vicious, cruel people work. They first will always target the people that they perceive most vulnerable.

They'll come after the trans kids. They'll come after the dreamers, immigrants that have been here all of their life. They'll come after their parents who they'll deport and continue to prey upon the ability they have to create an us versus them, an us versus them mentality. And what I'm begging everybody, as much as you and I are different genders, different races, is to get out of the thinking it is not us versus them. It's just us. And when they come after trans kids, stand up. When they come after gay people, stand up. When they come after immigrants who aren't violent, who the ones that aren't violent criminals that are being sent to Guantanamo, they have human rights. We all can say we share common values about the safety and security of our country, but watch who they target and watch who

they go after and realize that as soon as they finish going after them, they're going to come after you. I'm talking to two women. I'm sorry. I don't have to remind you that men who think in this way of like, oh, I understand what you're going through because I have a daughter, I have a mother, I have a sister. Screw you. You have a body. If somebody told you, the government told you what you could do with your body, you would be ready to fight. You should be ready to fight now because when they're going after women, they're going after you. And so I understand that we segment this world into race and gender and geography.

No, I'm trying to get us back to this understanding that this is one nation and we need to put more indivisible back into this one nation under God. And this is why we need to be appealing to and not demonizing Republicans or people that are triple Trumpers or not. That's not what you did, but demonizing people who are so desperate to have economic security, who are so feel such such betrayal of a country where they know that the American dream their grandparents had isn't working for them. I have to I have to say, I think this is an error we make because we live in a red state. Not one county went blue, not one. And assuming that these people voted in earnest for the good of the country or that they feel left behind completely does not acknowledge the fact that they freebase Fox News. And I'm telling you, Senator Booker, they are racist.

There are racist default settings. I've grown up in white America my whole life. And when I'm in white circles, a lot of racist things are said, both covert and overt. Trump gave the permission structures to these people, emboldened then by Fox News, to say, oh, it's about inflation. But really, everybody's been pissed off ever since a black man, not everybody, I'm talking about the MAGA base, not all MAGA, but a big portion of the base. And until we start acknowledging that and saying it more and more, because we all know, I know triple Trumpers,

and I'm telling you, they're racist. They're still racist. Now they've moved the goalpost on the price of eggs and inflation. Their votes are bigger than just that they think that's what's best for the country. They've fallen prey to all of this massive propaganda. And it feels like sometimes Democratic politicians always provide cover for their immoral ways. And I don't like that because I've lived around these people in Oklahoma City. I grew up around these people. I had a person at my house after Obama won that called Air Force One Afro One. And it was all white people there. And this is the kind of shit that goes on every day. And it's a million times worse now that Trump is in office. It's a million times worse.

I see it and hear it so much more. And I think this is a moment for white people, especially because we're here. We're out of the Beltway. We're here in Flyover State, the homeland of America, to inspire other white people about all of the good things that this diversity brings us. Now, they might still freebase Fox News or not, but I cannot get on board because I know too many triple Trumpers that some of them do need to be demonized. Some of them do think terrible things about Black people and about gay people and about trans people. And that's a deal breaker for me.

And that should be a deal breaker for all Americans because we believe in equality and fair chance for all. And so I have to push back on that a little bit because I just cannot give a lot of these triple Trumpers that kind of space. Yeah, well, I want to I want to, first of all, highlight some of the things you left out. It's not just Fox News. It's the fact that they're

trying to erase history in textbooks, to not tell, to Disney-ify our history in a way that supports this idea that somehow there aren't wretched, hateful, vicious parts of our history that don't make us weaker by telling the truth about us. And not only it makes us stronger and more aware that hate and racism and bigotry and sexism exists, and we have to do something about it. That's why in Germany, they teach about the Holocaust everywhere, not just to say this is history happened, but that we can't allow it to happen again. The battlegrounds for seeing the truth is real. And the second thing to say is, again, you don't have to tell me about

the persistence of racism. It infects the lives of so many. I was with a very successful African-American woman who told me literally as she's trying to sell her house, her home, that she had to get all the pictures of Black people out because of study after study has shown that the assessments will be lower if you have pictures of Black people in your house because of the implicit biases that exist. This is something that every Black person knows about these things and needs coping mechanisms with it. But here is the thing that I want you to understand. So I give no harbor to that as a person who's had horrible incidences with the police in my youth, as a person who has been, I don't need to go through my own personal pain that so many African-Americans, if not every African-American has stories about. But this is the most important thing, I think, just to now say to your point. Yes, give no space to people who act in ways that are bigoted.

That is something we have an obligation to do. But there also has to be a pathway for redemption for everybody. And the person that taught me this, the person that was my mentor in this was John Lewis, who told me in a long drive from Atlanta to Plains, Georgia, when you're going to listen to Jimmy Carter teach Sunday school, told me about the horrors and how many times, people forget how many times this man was beaten viciously by overtly racist, violent people. And then he told me about the day in his congressional office that one of the people that beat him came to see him with his grandchild,

begging him for his forgiveness, forgive me. And hearing how vicious the beating was, I looked at John and I said, what did you do, not knowing honestly what I would do in that circumstance? And John says, I forgave him because at the end of the day, I believe in the power of redemption and that everyone, ultimately, if we're going to redeem the soul of this nation, then everyone should have that pathway. And so those two things are not counterintuitive to call out racism, to call out bigotry, and especially not to defend the people who are the targets of bigotry and hatred. But we also have to know as a country that when you define someone as a

racist and don't give them space to evolve and grow, then we cut all of ourselves out from the benefit of a society that heals and evolves. That is the challenge we have right now, is we are still in a nation where we cannot have real conversations about our history. We can't have real conversations about the pain of the present. And it is a bar from us moving forward to a day with this kind of darkness and this kind of sin and this kind of immorality is a thing of the past. I'm going to get pumped the last question because I've kind of bogarted the interview. I know. She knows I think you're hot. So she's taking all the time for me and I'm furious to give Pumps the last question because I've kind of bogarted the interview. I know. She knows I think you're hot, so she's taking all the time for me, and I'm furious over it.

I need to cook that for my Instagram later. I did Pumps dirty. I am so sorry, everybody. All I've been talking about is, oh, my gosh, she's so cute. And now, of course, she bogarted, steals everything. All right. Okay. How concerned are you?

Like, we're talking about Ukraine and Putin and all that. And I completely am worried about that. But one thing, we have Pete Hexeth, who's profoundly incompetent. Now we're firing the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We're firing people at the Pentagon. We're taking the press out of the Pentagon. We're firing generals. So when I hear about how, you know, is the United States military weaker? I mean, I think it's weaker by this, but are we going to be so weak because we have such, we have to prove loyalty to Trump. We're going to get incompetent people in these positions. And then should something happen, which I know I'm, you know, being hyperbolic in this,

but should there be a military conflict? Will we be prepared? That's what concerns me after this weekend. So, and I know some people do like long form. So Jack Reed, who's a Senator from Rhode Island, was the chairman of the armed service committees. Now the ranking member for a powerful editorial, literally saying exactly what you said, which is when you change the military and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from someone who gives independent advice to the president, unfettered advice about the national security and our military readiness, when you change the culture and make those people, people that are instead political sycophants, personal political attendants, you weaken

America's safety and security and preparedness, and you assault the culture in our military that has been positive under presidents from both parties. So yes, this hurts our military, but more importantly for all of us who sleep well at night, it hurts the security of our country. When you have a president that puts it out that if you do not agree with me politically, there will be retribution, that undermines the ability for professionals to do their job independent from political concerns. Senator Booker, I love our, we ended up being your, your staff said 15 to 20 minutes and you've been so gracious. You've given us 42 minutes. I think that these conversations are healthy because we have a

big following here and for everybody to get engaged, you're welcome back anytime. We could have Sunday therapy sessions, progress reports. It's important. I think that we stay connected to our leaders. You hear what we're hearing from our followers. We hear about, I mean, honestly, everything that you reminded us of about what we fought for and how important and difficult those battles were was something I needed to hear because this is why you're a politician and I'm not because I get into the burn it all down stage. Well, you guys may have to rush. Can I just tell you a story about my most broken moment of my life? Yes. Without exaggeration, one of the times that I was so overwhelmed

by the injustices of the world that I wanted to just give up and check out. And it actually happened when I had lost my first run for mayor and four years to the next election. And I saw bad things happening by the person in power and something happened that just broke me. And it was basically, I was walking in my neighborhood and gunshots rang out. And I ran through screaming children with an off-duty cop behind me to find a teenager with bullet wounds in his chest. And I did everything I could to save his life. And it's so gruesome to watch somebody die of gun violence. And I just put my hands in his chest and tried to stop bleeding.

That seemed like it was coming everywhere until foamy blood started coming out of his mouth. I'm reaching my hands, thinking if I could clear the passageway, maybe he could breathe again. But I knew that he was dying and ultimately when there was no pulse. But the paramedics came and shoved me out of the way when they finally got there, which seemed like an eternity, and opened his chest up and tried to revive him, put him in an ambulance. And I'll never forget the police director who worked for the guy who beat me to this day tells me the story of how shaken I looked, traumatized. I look, I don't even have a memory of how I got back to my apartment,

but I will never forget standing in my bathroom, trying to scrub a dead teenager's blood from my hands and looking in the mirror and losing it. I gave up. I was so angry at this country. I felt rage like I had never felt before. Like how dare we all pledge this oath? We literally put our hands on our heart and we swear this ideal of liberty and justice for all. Where the fuck was the liberty and justice for the children in my community would die with unflinching regularity and nobody seemed to care. It wouldn't even make a headline anymore as black boys were dying at stunning rates. And I just remember feeling such anger and that I was done. I'd never had this experience before when you jump in the shower to just try to wash it off. And you turn the water so hot that you just hope that the pain

on the outside could somehow numb the pain that you're feeling on the inside. And I was living in these high-rise projects at the time. And I remember this sleepless night and getting up really early in the morning and and just trying to get out just trying to get away just trying to run and I came down into the lobby of the projects and when I walked through I remember this tenant leader this real hero in my life she was a tenant president of these buildings and her son was murdered in the lobby of the building I lived in back in the 1980s. And she didn't leave. This elderly woman kept staying in those projects, kept fighting for her community.

And as soon as I walked out of the lobby, who was in the courtyard between the two project buildings but this woman, Ms. Jones, only her and I early in the morning. And her back was turned to me. And I felt like I was a hundred feet underwater screaming on the inside, but I didn't say anything, but almost as if she heard my silent screams, she turns around and she sees me. And this woman does exactly what I needed at that point. Feeling so lost, so hurt, so angry, so surrendering to all the magnitude of the hurt and pain that seemed like it wasn't going to stop because nobody gave a damn about us.

And what she did was open her arms as an invitation to come to her. And I ran across that courtyard, like a little boy running to his mother. And I'm much bigger than he is, she is, but she wrapped her arms around me and I burst and cried tears of anger and rage and hurt and fear. I was so done with this country. I was so done with my even efforts to try to change things. I felt helpless. And this woman squeezed me and said two words over and over again that became my mantra when I eventually would become mayor and had my toughest days that sustained me, that I use even now in the Senate when I feel like I'm banging my head against implacable walls of resistance. And these two words have nothing to do with religion, but everything to do with how we got here over impossible odds and unimaginable opposition, how we survived,

how we made it over, how we overcame. This woman held me and simply said over and over again, stay faithful, stay faithful, stay faithful. So to all your listeners right now who feel like I felt broken, angry, hurt, scared, do not give up. Do not surrender. We will face defeats, but we can never be defeated. We will be knocked down, but we can't stay there. Faith brought us this far. Faith in each other, faith in our dreams and our ideals, faith in a nation. Don't surrender that to them. Don't let them win. Stay strong. Stay resolute. Stay perseverant. I promise you better days are ahead, especially if we keep standing up and speaking up and acting up. Stay faithful.

Senator Booker, that's so powerful. Our office experienced gun violence. October 12th, I had a young black kid that started working for me when he was 17 years old. And October 12th of 2024, he was my office with me for 40, 45 hours a week. I'm still, it's still so difficult for me to process because he was such a good, bright light. And I stayed connected to his family and his mother. But I realized, you know, I'd always, as a white woman, always heard that, you know, this shooting here, this shooting there, this shooting here. And I realized if you live in America long enough, somebody you love is going to get shot. And I've been thinking a lot, as we all have been, bigger thoughts, that we've allowed this kind of lawlessness as a way of kind of slowly starting to appease a little bit to this moment moment that we as a nation haven't stopped these

injustices quick enough, which led to the biggest injustice we're all seeing right now. When you love somebody, and this Javi was his name, and he was like a son to me. And I just, I walk in the studio every day and I see his desk and I go over to his, I can't, I can't replace him. I haven't hired anybody to replace him. I touch the keyboard that his fingers tapped and I touch the little mouse. He took care of this plant. He made my life so much better. I'm a much better person.

I'm the lucky one that this kid got to work for me. And so I am so upset that we're at a stage right now where you and I aren't talking about what can we do to solve gun violence, because now we have to solve the fascist problem first. But I hope that we all continue because all of these things aren't going anywhere. And as we're speaking here, young kids are getting shot. And, you know, the saddest thing, the saddest thing that was said to me at Javi's funeral was said by his aunt. I just said, I can't believe these guns. And she said, well, you know what we all think? And I said, what? She's a black woman. She said, they just put them in our community, so we'll kill each other. And I just, it was just overwhelming. And I felt so naive and so white and ridiculous, but that's that reality. And that's a fight that I want to fight. And that's a fight that I want to

partner with people to fight. And that's a fight back to one of your earlier points that's going to take all of us lifting each other up and understanding that we are all Americans as, you know, big of a statement as that is, but it's true. And I want to stand with all of the members of the Black community because my life is inherently better because of Black culture and all of the black people in my life. It's a million times better. And my life is a million times better. I'm an interior designer when I'm not a podcaster. So you can imagine I work with a lot of gay men. My life is a million times better because of the LGBTQ plus community. If I just lived in a white, heteroormative world. Snooze city, baby. I mean, that is not anything I want to be a part of. I love and embrace the diversity that we have in this country. So

thank you so much for show guarding the senator again. No, let me thank you because the way you all are creating community and connection and helping people who are who just lean on your voices. I am grateful. And more than that, you are challenging people, me as a leader speaking truth to power, but also challenging parts of your community. I talked about redemption before. The last thing I'll say is that King talked about what we have to repent for. And he said, what we have to repent for in our day and age is not just the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people.

You all with this podcast are just not being silent. And you're good people who are acting and inspiring that within the community you've created. So thank you for that. Thank you, Senator Booker. And I would like to apologize to my co-host, you for that. Thank you, Senator Booker. And I would like to apologize to my co-host, Pumps, for bogarting Senator Booker. You don't have a fistfight after this. No, we love working with your staff and we want every Democratic senator or any anti-Trump senator to know, as long as you're spitting facts and not propaganda. We're trying to build a community here because it's going to take all of us to

get through this. And you're welcome anytime. And we plan to come to D.C. soon in April to do some in-person interviews. And you're the top of my list. Thank you. I look forward to that. Giving you a hug in person. Yeah. Thank you for all the time today, Senator. Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.