Title: National Politics with Senator Booker

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Senator Cory Booker is standing by and will join us in a minute. New Jersey senior senator, having recovered enough from speaking for 25 hours on the Senate floor that he can come on and talk about that and what comes next. First, thanks to Matt Katz, Amina Srna, and Brigid Bergin for filling in last week. I was out for cataract surgery.

For those of you unfamiliar, and since it's something many people will experience, I'll tell you it's a little miracle of modern medicine. They literally, literally lift the scales from your eyes, and you pretty much get to choose what vision you have after that, assuming your eyes are otherwise healthy. It's really amazing. In fact, you know the face ID function? Some of you have that on your tablets or whatever. The face ID function on my iPad suddenly didn't recognize me. It made me use a passcode to get in.

Why? I think this week has been the first time anybody didn't see me in glasses since I was about 12 years old. Besides being happy for myself, you know what this has made me appreciate even more than before? Something that's under attack right now, medical research. Did you know? I didn't know this until last week when it became relevant to me. It's believed that the classical composers, Bach and Handel, who lived in the 18th century, both had failed cataract surgery.

According to an article about this from the University of Wisconsin School of Public Health website, in Bach's case, not only did two attempts at cataract surgery fail, but he developed a painful postoperative infection and was treated with laxatives and the favorite cure of his day, bleeding, the U of W Public Health website says. It says he was blind when he dictated his final work and died a few months later. In fact, the School of Public Health article on this said they had no conception yet in the 1700s of bacteria and what they could do to people after Bach died from complications from cataract surgery.

How do you reconcile a Make America Healthy Again campaign with cutting the financial guts out of medical research? Maybe that's today's equivalent of bleeding the patient, financially bleed medical research because that'll make Americans healthier. Someone will have to explain that to me. By the way, I'll be out again most or all of next week to get my other eye done. Get ready to be nice to some excellent substitute hosts one more time. Cory Booker is here. Senator, we've always appreciated when you've come on with us going back to your time as mayor of Newark. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Cory Booker: Thanks, Brian. I hope you don't think this is obsequious, but I've said it before. I just really treasure you in our metropolitan area. You have created a really special community and are one of those more trusted voices at a time that people get more entertainment often than really straight-talking news. Thank you.

Brian: You're way too kind, but thank you very much. Can I ask you first, how are you? That was a serious physical ordeal, the no sleep, water, bathroom breaks, everything. How are you?

Senator Cory Booker: My spirit is just soaring and I feel so grateful, a lot of outpouring of just kindness and grace towards me. Body's still sore, but I am reminded, especially for my days as a city council person and mayor of Newark, that there are many people right now who may be listening to you at their work who stand as long or longer than I do. I had a dear friend that worked in an IHOP on Bergen Street. She's now passed away, but it was 24 hours. She would catch two shifts.

If somebody could watch her kids, she'd catch a third shift just because she was struggling so much just to make ends meet. There are people who work in hospitals that are held over. There are police officers that I had the honor of being their mayor who we'd hold over on shifts. A lot of Americans go three, eight-hour shifts in a row. In many ways, those were the voices I wanted to center, the voices facing more challenges in that 25 hours on the floor.

Brian: I want to ask you next, what do you think you accomplished other than maybe reflecting the passion of the base who have wanted to see more fire from Democratic Party politicians?

Senator Cory Booker: I think more than the base, frankly, I had hoped to capture some attention from our larger nation and focus it on what's going on and how this is not a normal moment in America. There are really abnormal things happening. To hear from even Republican people in my world say that they appreciated that it wasn't a firebrand speech from the left. It was a deep appeal to the moral conscience of our country. That's why during those 25 hours, we brought in research from the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, AEI, American Enterprise Institute. These are right-leaning think tanks.

We elevated Republican voices, Republican elected officials, just to talk to how extreme of a time that we're living in and the things that the president are doing that are such an affront to our basic constitutional principles. This is, again, why we brought in the voices of Supreme Court justices from Antonin Scalia to the chief justice who have all called out what the president has done or cast a shadow over this president who seems to have no respect for our constitutional boundaries, limits, and checks and balances.

That's one thing that I feel seemed to have worked is to get the attention of people, because if this moment in American history is cast as a left-right moment, I think we lose. If it's cast as a right-wrong moment, I think that we'll be able to stop the president from doing some of the things that I think are an affront to most Americans, regardless of if you identify as a Republican or a Democrat.

Brian: I guess that would probably be your response to the critique of your speech from the obviously right-leaning and Republican-leaning New York Post editorial board. I'm going to read you a line or two from this. They wrote, "It did nothing to thwart the Senate GOP majority or slow the Trump agenda nor win back a single swing voter. It spoke only to the party's left-wing base, who are still fuming that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer didn't force a government shutdown last month."

Can you argue that your speech might actually slow the Trump agenda in some way or help pull swing voters, as they refer to, rather than it just having been preaching to the choir, regardless of the diversity of voices you were just saying you brought in as quotes?

Senator Cory Booker: I think that the moment we're in is not going to be an individual play. I think that this is a moment where you see a growing movement in our country to stop the president from taking away Medicaid, which is a program that benefits more than the ACA, which we stopped in 2017 with Republican support. This would go to 80 million Americans. This is why Republican governors have already come out and spoken out against it.

I think that from his tariffs, to the disappearing of people off American streets, to the assaults on social security, you're hearing more and more people on the right saying enough is enough. That's going to be something that's going to have to continue to grow to the point where we get enough Republicans to switch over and stop some of these things. There were a lot of incredibly noble stands taken by millions of Americans in the 2017 ACA fight. I lay witness to some of them.

I remember doing an impromptu sit-in next to John Lewis, where we just opened up a Facebook Live and it started-- I've seen the time-lapse pictures of just he and I sitting on the Capitol steps. By the time the sun went down, there were hundreds and hundreds of people gathered to sit at the feet of a man with tremendous moral magnetism. Now, was that the thing that made the difference in the ACA fight? No, but was it--

Brian: ACA, just for people that don't know, Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, when Trump was trying to repeal it. Go ahead.

Senator Cory Booker: Right. Was that the moment that made the difference? I don't know, but it was another additive movement to a growing awakening, called conscience, and eventually enough persuasion that John McCain and Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins switched their votes and ultimately saved a healthcare program that now polls well over 50% amongst Republicans. This is really what we all have to think about, which is it is not one action, no matter how much a person had to dehydrate themselves. It's going to be millions of actions.

This is the kind of moment where that question from the civil rights movement of, we are the leaders that we've been looking for, of what did you do in the cause of your country? All of us now have to think, what more can I do to stop some very dramatic changes to the very character, compassion, and strength of our nation and how we look after one another and take care of one another?

Brian: There's a quote from you that's being widely played or widely quoted. I'm actually not sure if this is from your time on the Senate floor or something you said in an interview afterwards. You said, "I confess that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue. I confess, we all must look in the mirror and say, we will do better." What did you mean by that lane that the Democratic Party gave to, obviously you mean Trump, by this demagogue?

Senator Cory Booker: I think that was in the last hours of my speech. It was just my truth telling. I've had constituents, especially since November, say to me that I'm not doing enough. I have to say that they're right. I could do more. I still can do more. That this moment calls for all of us to be more courageous and more bold. I wanted to be very candid about it.

At a time that we have a leader who turns his back on the history of past presidents who doesn't even say it when he's made a mistake, when he did something wrong, has no capacity for self-reflection, it was very important to me that I admit what most people know is that the Democratic Party in the past election didn't rise to the moment. We didn't win. We allowed him to win. This is not about blame. It's about all of us taking more responsibility. Again, I'm very sobered by the staggering pain what we face.

I had a town hall this weekend where an amazing young man with autism and anxiety, fear of crowds, stood and spoke, begged really to not allow his Medicaid that has allowed him to live independently. He stood with his mother and made an appeal to a crowd of 1,000 people that any cuts to his Medicaid-- I'm not talking the $880 billion, which would devastate the program entirely, but even 5% or 10% would spin a lot of people's lives, independence and wellbeing into catastrophe.

These are the folks that are showing us what courage looks like. The Democratic Party has to show courage, but as long as it's about the Democratic Party, I think we lose recentering people, their voices, their struggles, the realities, because that is bigger than party. This moment demands, as you said, that the Democratic Party does not have the numbers to stop any legislation. It needs a bipartisan moment where people say enough is enough.

Again, this last week to two weeks, I've been seeing more and more voices who seem to have the courage where there's a political price to pay if you speak out against the president. I've watched my former Senator of Arizona, Jeff Flake, who spoke out against the president. He's gone now. Corker, a Tennessee Republican, spoke out against the president. He's gone now. We've seen this with Congresswoman Cheney, spoke out against the president. She lost her seat.

I'm not saying that it doesn't come with costs, but there's a reason why I often joke that Profiles in Courage is such a thin volume, but yet there are people in it. We need people now to show courage against what they know is wrong, which I've been whispered to in private conversations with Republican colleagues who say that they disagree with things the president's doing, but they haven't had the courage yet to speak out.

The last thing I'll say to this is, I would love to be able to tell you that it was my persuasiveness or eloquence that convinced John McCain to vote against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but it wasn't. It was the American people. It was their rising. That's why what's important now is for each of us to answer the question, when our country's healthcare or retirement security or economic strength was in the balance, was I a witness, or was I a worker? Did I get caught in a state of sedentary agitation where I'm so upset about what's going on, but I don't get up and do something about it, or did I answer the call?

As I said during my speech, my generation will not be asked to do freedom rides knowing we'll be beaten or to do sit-ins knowing that boiling hot coffee will be poured on our heads or to march across a bridge named after a grand wizard of the KKK, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, knowing that we will be beaten savagely. That's not the call of this generation, but at least we can get out in the streets. At least we can march. At least we can lobby our congresspeople. At least we can stand up for our neighbors who will lose healthcare or our neighbors who will lose social security or our neighbors, veterans who stood for us in battles overseas. We can now stand for them, for their security at home.

Brian: In our remaining minutes, I want to ask you about what comes next. Listeners, I know some of you are calling in. We only have Senator Booker for a short time this morning, so we're going to let him speak, and we'll open up the phones afterwards. We're going to hook to the protest over the weekend, the "Hands-Off" protest. We will invite you to call in if you participated and say, "Hands-off what?" Fill in the blank for yourself, and you can talk about Senator Booker's appearance here on the Senate floor. Hold your calls for the moment.

As we look to follow up on your last answer at what comes next, a couple of things. Kurt Davis from the right-of-center think tank, the Atlanta Council, pushed back on your speech in an op-ed for The Hill. He wrote, "The Trump administration has perfected Steve Bannon's flood the zone approach to media dominance. This Republican media mastery reflects a sophisticated understanding of our fractured-attention economy. Democrats, meanwhile, cling to tactics better suited to an earlier political era."

Now, clearly, your speech broke through. It was seen, I think, hundreds of millions of times on TikTok. We're still talking about it a week later. How do you think other Democratic lawmakers can meet this moment now? They can't all go on the Senate floor for 25 hours.

Senator Cory Booker: I think the most important thing right now is to remember our history. We did not get the suffrage movement because a bunch of men on the Senate floor all put their hands in and said, "Fellas, let's give women the right to vote. Ready? Break." We didn't get the civil rights movement because people like Strom Thurmond came to the Senate floor and said, "I've seen the light. Let those Negro people have the right to vote." No. All of those things happened because in a moral moment in America, people decided that I'm going to stand up.

I'm going to redeem the dream of this country. I'm going to speak out. It's not about what we're doing. Again, we must do more. I must do more. It is about what the people of the United States of America choose. Perhaps one of the most meaningful little stretches of time I had when I had the strange moment where the president of the United States called me up, this was the last president, Joe Biden, an hour before his speech, he called me up to ask to read to me a section of his speech and ask my advice. It's just a stunning reality.

First of all, it assuaged my guilt still of all these years of waiting to the last minute too many times to do papers in college. I gave him my advice and told him I would change some things. I told him what I really thought. Then in his speech, I'm sitting there, and I hear him use my input. I thought it was tremendous. When I got home, I got this text message from John Meacham. I didn't recognize the number, but he said, "This is John Meacham. Thank you for helping the president with his speech. You made more of a difference than you'll know." I was so blown away by that. Now I had John Meacham's cell phone number, so I trolled him until he came and visited me.

Brian: That's the historian who also was a Biden advisor.

Senator Cory Booker: Yes, and a Republican, to be frank. He came to my office, and I loved it. I complained to him about where we were, and he looks at me and he said, "Nothing about this moment is unprecedented. Everything is very press." Then he did a tour de force of history of all of these moments from Madison Square Garden being filled with Nazi sympathizers to an American general during the depression calling for a military takeover. We need a strong man to lead this government.

He went through times I had forgotten or didn't know. Then he looked at me and he said, "Every one of those moments when we were at a brink, when we were at a crossroads of character for our country, when we were redefining what the American spirit would be in a new generation, what pulled us back from going down darker pathways, pathways of crass cruelty, pathways of affliction to our constitution, what pulled us back every single time was not some bold face name, some senator or celebrity. It was always the American people saying enough is enough." That's how we want civil rights. That's we want suffrage. That's how we want labor rights. This is the moment.

What I was trying to do and what I feel as I walk around New Jersey and see the kind of reaction people had last weekend is to try to let people know that in a democracy, the power of the people is always greater than the people in power. The most common way people give up their power is not realizing they have it in the first place. This is a time to understand that each of us, as powerful as Donald Trump is, he's the most powerful man in the world. As rich as Elon Musk is, he's the richest man in the world. We still live in a democracy. This is still the United States of America, and we can still control its destiny if we do something, as John Lewis says, if we're willing to get into good trouble.

Brian: I know we're going to lose you in a few. Let me ask you as senator from New Jersey about a local example. Rutgers, the Rutgers University Senate, I don't know if you've seen this yet, is trying to get all the big 10 schools to say no to Trump's threats in a unified approach. For people who don't know, in the Rutgers case, here's the headline from northjersey.com, "Trump targets Rutgers over New Jersey nonprofit that promotes diversity of doctoral students."

It says, "Rutgers is one of 45 universities under investigation by the Trump administration over allegations that it violated student civil rights because of its connection to the PhD project, a North Jersey nonprofit that aims to increase access to doctoral degrees in business from underrepresented groups." If Trump is determined, Senator, to enforce no DEI of that sort with funding sanctions, like you see what he's done to some of the Ivy League schools already, what can Rutgers and other big 10 schools do if they band together? Is it just take the hit? Like, dock us $400 million or whatever the number's going to be, so they establish that you don't cave?

Senator Cory Booker: Again, I am in awe of the labor leaders who physically took the hit of billy clubs and cops. I am in awe of people at Stonewall who took the hits physically and got beaten. I'm in awe of Fred Shuttlesworth, who was stabbed and chain whipped and had his house bombed in the civil rights movement. When is it enough? When do we say, "I'm going to stand, despite the consequences. I'm going to stand up for what's right."

I get it with law firms who are having their rights, the very ideals of our legal system are being broken by what Trump is doing to these law firms. I get it that they want to kowtow to him. This is a president who has twisted what John F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you. For Trump, it's ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for Donald Trump. If you kowtow to him and capitulate to him and pay him off, in some ways quite literally, then you could avoid his scorn.

Those people who are willing to take the financial loss, to take the financial hit and stand up for principle, we are here because of those kind of people. We are here because of those kind of folks who were resolute and took the consequences. I can't advise a university, who literally is having the most important scientific research on the planet Earth, be abridged or stopped because this president is cutting indirect costs. There are literally scientific programs across the country.

Fareed Zakaria wrote a powerful article documenting how postdoc programs are being cut, how PhD programs are being cut, while China is doubling down, investing more in their scientific research. The question is, what are we going to do about it? I give a lot of love to Rutgers professors that are saying, "We're going to stand on the right side of history here."

There may be a consequence, but at the end of the day, the only way we stop him is by standing up. If we do nothing, nothing will change, but if we do something, if we draw the line here, I promise you, if more and more people stand like that, Donald Trump will not win.

We will push back and we will liberate the very ideals of academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to represent clients, no matter how reprehensible they are. This goes back to what Adams did in representing the British soldiers who killed people like Crispus Attucks at the Boston Massacre. That is who we are. We are defiant against the ideals of authoritarianism, as we were at the founding of our country, as civil rights leaders, as suffrage leaders, as labor leaders, as so many have in the past. This is a moment in America where we need more Americans to stand up and say, "No, enough is enough. I will stand for America."

Brian: Senator Cory Booker. Senator, you're so in demand right now. We really appreciate you coming on with us today. Keep coming on. Always good to talk to you.

Senator Cory Booker: Brian, it is good to talk to you because the fourth estate or the media is under attack. You're seeing that in a president banning people from the White House who just wouldn't say that it's the Gulf of America, not the Gulf of Mexico. There are so many aspects of what makes the character of our country strong under assault. The media is one of them, and your voice, steadfast and resolute, despite even cataract surgery. I am just grateful for you, as I have been for 20-plus years. I'm looking forward to the next chance we have to talk.

Brian: You're too nice. Senator Cory Booker, thank you very much.

Senator Cory Booker: Thank you.

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