← Lunch with Jamie
Lunch with Jamie
Cory Booker: Trump's Iran Strike Backfired — 'The Only One Who Surrendered Is Him'
01:37:35
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A
Welcome to lunch with Jamie. As you can tell, today I'm not at home. I am at Rita House. And I have a special guest today is Senator Cory Booker, who is in Los Angeles, the greatest city in the world. Obviously, for those of you who aren't familiar with Corey, he is most known as being a standout tight end at Stanford, but in those years since that time, he has gone on to be mayor of Newark. And the U.S. senator from New Jersey since 2013. Sits on the Committee of the Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Agriculture, Small Business, and is the chair of the Senate Democratic Strategy Strategic Communications Committee. It's a lot of committees. In April of last year, he made headlines for delivering the longest speech in Senate history, standing on the floor for over 25 hours.
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B
I feel like he could have gone
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A
26, but we'll talk about that later and just released a new book called Stan, which is available now and is awesome. So, Senator Booker, thank you very much for joining me.
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B
Is it weird? Like, we've been having conversations for years, but now we're on, like, a podcast, and this is, like, very. And I've also seen this evolve.
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A
Yes.
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B
Which has been really amazing to me. It's like you're. It's an idea that really has caught fire.
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A
I appreciate that.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You've been there since almost day one. You were my first guest. Almost. Almost six years ago. When it was just a zoom.
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B
Yeah.
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A
When we just learned what zoom was.
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B
Yes.
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A
And now it's a podcast, but I
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B
hope it still has that feel of a community where you're really connected to people.
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A
That's the goal. The goal is I, you know, I want to know everybody listening. That was my. That's my dream. So since this is Lunch with Jamie, we're not eating, but. And I know you and I have a slightly different feeling on what's our favorite restaurants or the foods that we eat, but if I was coming to Jersey and you were taking me someplace.
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B
Yes.
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A
Knowing that I'm not striving for a vegan restaurant, but also knowing that you're not probably taking me to a steak place. Where are we going?
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B
There is a cultural institution that is deeply Jersey, where that gives joy to millions, and that's called the Jersey Diner. I would take you to one of my favorite diners that often have menus as thick as phone books.
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A
Love that.
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B
So that you and I both could find anything we want. And you could visit European cuisine, Asian cuisine. You could go around the world. Greek. Definitely Greek. Because a lot of the diners were the vanguard or the Diner movement, in many ways were the Greeks.
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A
Jersey. You've told me how great Jersey is many times. And you can rattle off some stats that like selling ice to an Eskim. We could take.
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B
We could take. Every other state's motto is New Jersey like the sunshine. Sunshine State, Florida. When the sun goes down. The light bulb. We invented the light bulb. You got the first in flight. North Carolina. The first recorded balloon flight was in Jersey.
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A
This is not a Jersey promotional ad. So I'm telling you that now. If I go to eat in Jersey, I'm taking you to Raza Dan Ricker's pizza place and I'm taking you to Belmont Tavern, which I love.
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B
I love this.
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A
Never been to either.
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B
I have been to both. Okay, great.
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A
Obviously. Okay, great. And second, I've known you for a very long time. In my research, I learned that you were considered the Senate's most famous bachelor. I don't know what that famous doesn't mean.
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B
I did not know that. I did not know that. But there are more single people than people probably think in the. In the Senate. There's a lot.
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A
I think it's probably an old, old category.
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B
Category. Yes. Yes.
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A
But you're no longer a bachelor.
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B
No, Blissfully, I'm in my seventh month of marriage.
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A
Congratulations.
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B
Yeah, it's actually life changing in the best of ways. We were talking about it before we started. I think that, you know, in the Jewish faith, you can't read Jewish mysticism, mystical texts until you're 40 years old and married. And I actually understand. I feel like I'm more grounded and more capable than I've ever felt before.
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A
Great. I love that. Well, I met your wife. She's awesome. And I'm so happy for both of you.
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B
Thank you.
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A
And I can't wait for little Corey's running around.
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B
I am. From your lips to God's ears.
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A
All right, now we're getting into some more. More. Some wide variety affair. We're trying to cover as many topics as possible.
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B
Yes. What is your favorite kind of guest? Did you know your people told me to flip this around and interview you?
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A
My favorite guest.
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B
Because are you having. You're not only having political guests, you have people from all over.
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A
No. Politicians, thought leaders, you know, Scott Galloway, Jonathan Haidt, Kara Swisher, Fareed Zakaria. I did the creators of the show Adolescence, which I loved. Sam Harri. I love when we get into just conversations and it feels more of a conversation than a podcast. And I'm learning, which I'm always learning, which is to some extent like this is just a trick to convince really smart people to come out and have a conversation with me.
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B
But you've always been intellectually curious about every subject though, from culture to politics to even science.
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A
Yes, 100%. That's what my newsletter, Jamie's List is all about. Food, politics and culture. And at first I wanted to like silo everything away, but then I realized it's like when you're at a dinner table, what are you talking about?
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B
But I would argue, I mean, the thing that I worry about. So my mission in life has always been about like, how do you expand human well being. And I felt very, you know, I moved to Newark when I'm not from Newark. I moved there in the 90s because I thought I was going to be working on criminal justice and housing and issues of where poverty had become a trap. But it's my. So I find myself evolving. I thought I could do that through politics, but there are some limitations now to if you're really about trying to human flourishing and human well being in this country. One of the big challenges is just that we are very unhappy as a culture. We're very, I mean, I think Galloway writes a lot about this and others that you mentioned about the growing sense of isolation, loneliness, disconnect, where we get strength, I think. And one of the chapters in the book wrote about community is I think so important towards human well being and human flourishing. And so I wonder about, I'm in this world of policy, but I'm wondering how we repair a lot of the forces that are shearing us apart and making us so profoundly unhappy.
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A
Yeah, I think you're spot on. I think curiosity is what like is like the core of who I am. And I think that is something that can help so many people in the sense of just being curious about different cultures or different sports or different foods or different politicians and not being closed off and being willing to try new things. Because I think finding a community is really hard, whether you're a teenager growing up or you're in your later years in life just never being closed off and being willing to have an awkward conversation or an awkward interaction to potentially open up to a new experience that may be something that's missing from your life.
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B
Right. But I think that we're, I definitely could tell you policy things I think we're doing that are harming the ability for people to feel rootedness and connection. But I know that culturally there's been a lot of trends from the time you and I were growing up till now. We had more affiliations, you had more. I don't want to repeat the Bowling alone theory of that book, but in many ways it's very true. And I'm sorry. Struggling with what do we do in the face of social media and technology that's further isolating us and further pulling us apart. I'm thinking a lot about what can we do to be restorative now. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that most Americans are living with this cortisol constantly pumping into our heads, which is that I can't afford to raise my family. If you talk to people raising families now, it is so much harder and. And you're in so much more of a state of insecurity because of the financial challenges and stressors. Affordable child care, paid family leave, health care for your kids and your families. And it's really an interesting thing for me to find on the right and the left, this sort of horseshoeing where people are beginning to say that the culture we have right now is so hard working against raising healthy families. So I'm hoping that we can find things in the. In the policy realm, but I do think in the cultural realm that we've got to figure out a way to celebrate connection and community. I'm happy to see the younger kids getting away from dating apps and trying to figure out more ways to create connection and meet people in real life. But I'm curious what you're thinking about, having had all these incredible people, because I have to say, knowing you for a long time, you seem like you're happier today than maybe even 10 years ago. And I don't know if you'd say that.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But you just seem ground more grounded and. But I don't know if you've gleaned any wisdom that could help someone like me. How do we. In ten years from now? I hope that we are a country that has banished economic insecurity. I hope that we're a country that has dealt with housing crises and healthcare crises. But my real ambition for 10 years from now, not just the policy side, is that we see more human flourishing in America, more of a renewed sense of community in America. Common cause, common purpose, the kind of things that bound us. One of my favorite quotes in my book was this chaplain during the Civil War that asked this question that me and an incredible woman named Marissa who helped me write the book, we both were like, whoa. When he asked this question, he said, are we a nation or have we a government? Are we just this country that this group of People that has a government, or do we really have something that bonds us together? You know, the end of the Declaration of Independence, which I think is a declaration of interdependence. When they say this, you know, we're going to try to create this new country, this new idea, not because we all look alike or pray alike, but based on virtue. And in order to make that kind of nation work, we have to pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Like, that's this belief that we're in this together, that I belong to you and you belong to me. It's beautiful to me. And I think we've been yearning to try to create that beloved community, as King would talk. But if there's. There's anything I worry about, because you and I are of the age now where 10, 15 more years, we need to start making ways for younger generations in the jobs we are. I think the mistake I see in the Senate and a lot of places, people just stay too long is how do we get there in 10 years where we've renewed. We have an American renewal of sorts, where people are feeling the sense of connection, feeling the sense of common cause, feeling this community, this beloved community in America.
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A
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there, obviously. I think, you know, I was talking to someone this morning who's turning 50 on Friday, and I was saying, like, I turned 50 in January and like, I'm more excited for this decade than I was for the last. And I'm. Be honest, I'm more excited for the next decade after and what's to come. And I think that's because I thrive off trying to find new things that I can learn and become a part of. And I'm always continually changing who I am in some ways, not in my core values, I don't think, but just, like, what makes me happy and what. And leaning into that stuff. And as my kids go off to college, my second one goes off to college, be more intentional about, like, what I'm doing. And I think for the nation overall, I think, you know, listen, you're seeing a rise in people going to church. The movie theaters are filling up again this year. I think these communal experiences are critical. That's why you're seeing concert business booming. You know, unfortunately, again, that gets back to income inequality, because who can afford going to a concert game? Who can afford going to a Knicks playoffs game? So we obviously have a lot of work to do in that sense, but there. There's tons of things people to do to find Community that are really exciting. Like, we in la, we have this event, lacma, on Friday nights in the summer, where it's jazz at. LACMA went the other night. It was just like, so great. The whole community was out and people bringing picnics and, like, those are the things I think are critical. I mean, obviously there are opportunities when it comes to policy of things that can be done. And I think one thing that I think is so critical going forward is some form of national service. And I think you're hearing about it. Wes Moore has obviously done a good job in Maryland with it, but we're just scratching the surface. And to me, that's one of the only real policy things that could radically make an impact in a very quick way to bring our kind of country back together in some way.
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B
Yeah, I would hope we could be more entrepreneurial in our sense of creating community again. And I think that this is my hope for our country right now. That gives me more of a sense of renewed sense of mission. And it's interesting. Of all people, Frank Luntz and I talked about this. Yeah, he came to me and very generously said, you ran for president like, you know, years too early. He goes, when you were running, everybody wanted to punch the other person in the face. And here you were talking about love and community and things like that. And he said that the strange thing now is that people are starting to, on both sides of the aisle, say, enough of this already. We want the kind of people that can bring people together, that can work together and achieve common cause. I actually think that this. I think that in many ways, the virtue, the lack of virtue, I would say. But what Donald Trump is exhibiting then, on a major religious holiday, he slams his enemies, he calls reporters. I just think that that is. This is the last burning through of a. Of a era that I think people have seen it, looked at it, and said, that's not who we are in our communities and our neighborhoods. And that I hope that we can be more entrepreneurial, we can have a more of a moral imagination about how to pull us back. And those trends that you're talking about, church attendance, movie attendance, to me, I hope, are the green shoots of what we're gonna start thinking of in a much more collective sense. Because we talk about this, all the kids on the block, every mother knowing the horde of kids running around. And we will speak to the memories of that sense of community. You had how it does take a village to raise a kid. I grew up in a neighborhood like that, and now I think it's on us to how do we design a society around that, where we are doing things that really facilitate a repairing of our bonds. And if there's anything in the Senate that I've learned is our culture vilifies each other, it's like we celebrate the vilification. I. I've had that experience of going around this country where people know nothing but maybe one takedown video about me, and they heap upon me all this anger and what I found to get things done in the Senate. Often it is trying to say, okay, the frayed fabric between the two sides. And I think anybody in America who's in this tribal world feels real injury, often from somebody that might represent the other side of the aisle or even intra tribalism that we see in the Democratic Party right now. But one of my favorite moments in the Senate was when Bill Bradley, before I got to the United States Senate, challenged me. He said, I challenge you to go out to dinner with or sit with every member of the Republican Party. And sent me on a great odyssey. That really was one of the best experiences those early days, meeting these titans. I write about John McCain in the book, but the one I will never forget is a guy named Jim Inhofe who's now passed away, who probably was somebody on our side of the aisle that we torched for. He was famously brought the snowball to the Senate floor. You know, yeah, we know the. We may have forgotten his name, but we know the things that he did. And I couldn't get him to meet with me. I'm like, I couldn't get him to sit down. So I found out he has Bible study. And he's probably a brand of Christian evangelicalism that I am not. But I'm a guy that grew up in a small black church in Newark, New Jersey, rather. So I said, let me go to Bible study. So I go in and I'll never forget Thune was there. This is before he was leader and mostly Republican. And as soon as I walk in his office, I see something that challenged my implicit biases. And we all have them. But I never thought that I would walk into his office and see a picture of him in a really affectionate embrace with a little black girl. And I look at the picture on his mantel and I go back then, I didn't call senators by their first names if they were older than me. Here's a guy my dad's age And I go, Mr. Chairman, sir, who dat? And he beams this warm smile at me and he tells me this moving Story of his family adopting a kid out of a really bad crisis. And it really shook me. And maybe I've been judge and jury over the state of your soul. And many months pass by, and I'm sitting on the floor of the senate one day with an amendment I want to put on an education bill that was going to pass through the senate. Lamar alexander was managing the bill, and he was like, whenever they get a bill deal, no amendments on the bill. It's just like, let's get it through. Nobody put anything on it that could upset the balance. And I'm sulking because I had an amendment that I thought would really help homeless and foster kids who often have some of the more difficult educational outcomes. And I'm sulking. I can't get this amendment on the bill. And then I see inhofe come into the well of the senate and stand there talking to the parliamentarian, and I say, what the heck? And I walk down to him And I go, Mr. Chairman, sir, I know how much you care about disadvantaged children, and, you know, I invoke the spirit of the little girl I saw in the picture. And he gives me the senate version of no. He goes, I'll think about it, Cory, and I'll talk to my staff. I go back and sit in my seat in the back row in the senate, and suddenly I see look up, and as if his GPS is off, he's marching straight towards me. And he comes up to me and gives me back the card that had explained the amendment. He goes, you know what? I'm in. And then he starts walking away. I go, what do you mean, sir? He goes, I'll co sponsor your amendment. And then as soon as he walks away, I see Grassley on the floor. I hustle over to chuck Grassley, And I go, Mr. Chairman, sir, Senator inhofe. And I have an amendment. And he goes, what? And I go, yeah, senator inhofe and I have an amend, and would you get on it? And he gets on it. By the time I go back to lamar Alexander, I have all these republicans, and it's now law of the land. And so I just. Our fabric as a country is really torn, and not just in our politics and in tv, but it's torn down to our family gatherings, even. And I think there's still enough threads there that as much as you might have thought somebody thinks something about somebody, we can still take those threads and weave them together and perhaps repair this fabric and re establish that sense of community.
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A
So leaning into that for a second, we are recently past our birthday of our 250th year of our nation. I want to figure out how to give you for you not to give me the hour answer to this question, forgive me, which you could speak so perfectly and poetically, unlike Donald Trump did on the birth of our nation, on our birthday. But what is the state of our nation right now? And in some ways, I'm not going to give you the answer. I want to some extent, but I'm curious to more of some of the positive elements to the state of our nation. Now, when you think back, as opposed to we talk about the negatives on a daily basis, but which are true and very clear. But you know, if you were a person 250 years, you dropped in today and you looked at what was happening and what do you think they would think? What do you think they would think about where we've come as a nation?
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B
I mean, you're 50, so you're 20% of this country's history. You've been alive for. It's really amazing to think, it's wild to think how short of a time 250 years is. And I think we would blow. You know, my mom has a saying behind every successful child is an astonished parent. You know, so I clearly they would be astonished. I mean, the fact that you and I, a black and a white guy and I'm a United States senator, still only the fourth ever elected to the Senate. We're still in a nation where there's been more senators named Charles than there have been women in the Senate. So. But yet they would be stunned at the reality, not to mention the Apple Watch you have on your hands and the like. But I think I want to answer your question more that because I love our history. And one of my a guy who's it's astonishing me that I have friends that are now imminent historians. And Jon Meacham has become a real good friend.
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A
And
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B
I think we are more we are in a time that echoes like the 1920s. And what I mean by that is that that was a time of where the extremes were starting to really grow. We saw the American Nazi party hold a Madison fill Madison Square Garden. You saw on the right Communists were growing in their influence. You had a United States Senator Huey Long saying the people are going to storm the Capitol. So this radicalism, not to mention the sweeps of terror in the south against African Americans that were going on at that time. You had massive income inequality at that time as well, huge concentrations of corporate power, famous books like Upton Sinclair the Jungle talking about the meatpacking industry. And there was this feeling that the idea of America was being lost and people were searching for alternatives. And it was around that time that we. That we righted ourselves and saved our country by this American renewal. And my grandfather, who was a Republican because most blacks were Republican back there, all switched over to this party that so captured this country's imagination. One party that they held durable majorities in Congress until Tip o' Neill at the time you and I were coming up and what they did with the power that they gained four terms of Roosevelt and going on and on and on until the Reagan revolution upended this actually philosophy of America that Reagan was such a rejection of was that we were going to make an America for everybody. And they brought back into sweeping legislation that upended the concentrated powers of wealth. Labor got huge power. We had the highest union membership during this period. Wage growth and productivity growth were linked during one of the periods where we saw the biggest expansion in the middle class, not in American history, in human history. Shared growth was happening. College costs were coming down. Pell grants were like 75% of the cost of college. GI Bill and more. You had this unbelievable public investment not just in education, but also science and research infrastructure. We were a nation that invested in itself and we all reaped the benefits. And we showed the world during that period. We went to the moon during that period. We beat the Nazis. When Americans could unify, there was nothing we couldn't achieve. And then the Reagan revolution happens and says enough of this. We broke up the big monopolies. Bork said we're not going to enforce antitrust laws. You had the reconcentration take the meatpacking industry. That went from being broken up. It became middle class jobs for a long period of time. Now it's back to being a concentrated industry. A lot of undocumented immigration. And that period of shared economic growth though is what I think saved our country. My father, who was born in that period, 1936. If you were going to be born poor on the planet Earth, the best place on the planet Earth to be born poor was America. We're no longer that other countries are out Americaning us on a lot of things that define that generation. That if you were born when my father was born, 90% of that generation did better than their parents. Now for kids born in the 90s or early aughts, it's well less than 50%. So I say all that to say I think we're actually at that period again. Where I feel like we are burgeoning on another American renewal that saves ourselves from the extremes on both sides, that rethinks the economic bargain like FDR launched. That is a period of shared growth. That is a period where we invest again in ourselves and we reclaim the very idea of America. And so my bet, this is the reason why I was waxing philosophical before. But my goal in my life right now in the next five or 10 years is that we have that American renewal renewal that we find a way to redeem the dream of America that so many people on both sides of the aisle are losing their faith in. And in the context of the 250 years that we're talking about, that's the power of America is time and time again in our history. We've come to the brink. Whether it was a civil war or the Pre World War II period where the middle was straining, extremes were rising and another sort of reimagining of our country had to happen to make the deal work, to make the bargain work. And my hope for the next five years, because I think there's two election cycles where we can achieve, like FDR did, big sweeping legislation that can end public corruption which we've normalized in all three branches, where we can get back to periods of shared growth where the economic bargain fundamentally works for working people, where we can create a party in the middle again that has everybody from rural farmers to urban factory workers, everybody from intellectuals to the kind of folks that take showers at the end of the day, not at the beginning. I think that there is a yearning for a party that could capture the mighty middle and again bring us together to do big things as a nation. Not big things in terms of science and technology. I want to still do those things at the. I think we need to be the nation of innovation. But big things in terms of human flourishing and the well being of its people, that I think is the most fundamental things. Are we taking care of our own, do you think?
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A
I think that makes so much sense and it gets me excited and I think in general I'm maybe to a fault an optimistic person. I wake up every day and I'm excited and I'm looking for the good in everything and have a hard time kind of criticizing people in a way maybe I should a little bit more because I think although we have a little too much of that in our lives, I think it's important to be able to.
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B
Yeah, but I think that's. There's a little bit of BS in what you're Saying in the sense of. So I had a savior complex when I moved to Newark like this. Like, I'm going to come there and make so much change. You know, here I am, this kid from. From Yale Law School, and da, da, da, da. And I love that Newark beat me down and then built me back up. And I always believe that when you come to the end of all the light, you know, and you're about to step into the darkness, faith is knowing one of two things is going to happen. Either you're going to find solid ground when you step into that darkness, or the universe will send you people who will teach you how to fly. So I jump out of my comfort zone, move on to this dangerous neighborhood in Newark, and perceive it really tough. There was, like, a crack house there. It was across the street from the projects, and the universe sent me. Somebody gave me flying lessons. Like a woman named Ms. Virginia Jones, the tenant president of the projects across the seat. And to your point, this is what she said to me. She goes, I said, I'm Cory Booker. I'm here to help. And she's like, you want to help me? First, describe my neighborhood. I go, what do you mean? And I go. She goes, describe your neighborhood. And I described it like. I described to you crack house projects, crack graffiti, you know, you name it. And then she says, well, you can never help me. She starts walking away, and I'm like, what the hell? And I run after her, and I stop her from behind, very, very respectfully, and I'm like, what do you mean? And she goes, the world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. And if you look at my neighborhood and all you see is problems, darkness and despair, that's all there's going to be. But if you're one of those stubborn people who every time you open your eyes, you see hope, you see possibility, you see love, you see the face of God, she goes, then you can help me. That was mid-1990s. If you go back to that street right now, first of all, we named it after her. Second of all, there's new schools, new housing, entrepreneurs from the community. One of my favorite soul food restaurants is right there. Parks, you name it. Because, like you, she refused to get up in a day and not believe that she was gonna change this world of hers. So I don't understand people that surrender to cynicism given the same facts that you and I see. And to this point of America, I'm sorry, Baldwin said this in the 60s, in the fire Next time. And I'll paraphrase him, but human history is in general, and American history is in particular, perpetual testimony to the achievement of the impossible. And so, like, who are we to. How dare we insult people with cynicism or skepticism about what can be achieved, if anything. What Ms. Jones taught me, her son murdered in those buildings. She taught me that what real hope is, is not ignoring the problems, but real hope is the act of conviction that despair won't have the last word. That you get up every day, roll up your sleeves, and get working for that possibility that you. You refuse to give up on.
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A
Oh, I Love that. Where's Ms. Jones? She passed.
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B
She passed. She passed. Yeah.
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A
I love her.
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B
Yeah, she's. She's really. I get emotional because you're making me miss her now, but I would not be here right now. She. She's literally the one. Like, I'm. I'm. I have a Scadden Fellowship. I don't do it with that as this honorary fellowship to do public interest law. It was a two year fellowship. And I was very happy. I thought my dream was to be a guy named Jeffrey Canada. I don't know if you know who that is. Yeah, he started the Harlem Children's Zone. That was my dream. That was my hero. That was my ten year plan. And she called me to a tenant meeting and sat me down and said, the city's corrupt and we're gonna take on city Hall. And I go, I'm happy to help you. She goes, you don't understand. You're our candidate. And next thing you know, I am terrified. And. Because at that point in my life, I really. Politicians were suspect to me. But I'm suddenly running for my first office in my 20s.
- [31:09]
A
And I was there. I was there shortly after that to be alongside you. Everybody should buy your book and read your book. But I think people. One thing I want to really hit on is everybody's overwhelmed and we talk about all these different things. And I think people wake up on a daily basis. And one of the biggest challenges is they just don't think they can make an impact or they can make a dent. And they don't think. There's not. They're thinking of big things they could do. And you've talked about this your whole career. Just about. You have a great quote to talk about it where. Which I think is so emblematic of what's important, but like in relationship to your book. And also, in addition to that idea of just doing a little. Just doing something. What's your Message to people when they get up in the morning.
- [31:52]
B
So I wrote this book to answer exactly that question. So many people were asking me they're feeling overwhelmed. What can I do? What can I do? So I wanted to write a book that directly answered that question, that it was going to be inspiration, but also instruction about what you can do. And I've been thinking a lot about one of the best locker room speeches you and I have ever heard, any given Sunday. Al Pacino football is a game of inches. And one inch can separate making a tackle or not, first down or not. Those inches add up. Fight for every inch is what he's talking about. And the best receipt I bring in. The book about how awfully we underestimate doing a little bit was a guy that, on March 5, 1965, before you and I were born, was watching TV and they shift the breaking news to show the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And for those of you don't know the backstory, most Americans don't got a kid. This reminds me of Alex Preddy, actually was going to save a woman who was being thrown down by an Alabama state trooper who happened to be his mother and got murdered as he went to her aid, shot and killed. And at the funeral, a bunch of people said. And it was during a voting rights protest. They said, we're going to protest this. And then they start this march from Selma to Montgomery. And so he's just a guy in Jersey, a lawyer, white guy, watching this on tv, and his first instinct is, I got to go and do the grand thing. I gotta go to Alabama. And he's realized I can't afford a plane ticket. But he said, I'm not gonna let my inability to do everything undermine my determination to do something. So he does this. What you might think is a meager calculation, but this goes again, how much we underestimate our power. He says, I'm giving an hour more of pro bono work. He calls around and finds this young woman in New Jersey named Lee Porter, who we buried last year at 98. And she just became head of the organization that she was still head of in 98, in 1965. She'd just become head of the Fair Housing Council of New Jersey. And. And had that job until last year. And she says, I don't know how to break the housing discrimination in New Jersey, it's so fierce. And. And they go. He goes, well, let me think about this. And he comes back, hour a week of volunteering. We're going to create a sting operation. We're going to send black couples into white neighborhoods and if they're turned around or two told the house is sold, or we're going to send a white couple to see what different experience and we're going to highlight that. And they did. They exposed it. They got a lot of media attention. And for years they were trying to help these black families. And he said, years pass. At 69, this couple's coming into New Jersey frustrated as hell that they can't find homes in the towns that had the highest ranking public schools. And so they sent them out to look at a house. They fell in love with the house, but the real estate agent said, oh, it's sold. And so, so they leave. But the white couple volunteers came and found out the house was still for sale, put a bid on the house. The bid was accepted. And on the day of the closing, the white couple didn't show up. The lawyer and the father of the family, the black man, Marty Friedman, and this black guy walk in. This is the joke, you know, A black guy and a Jew walk into a real estate agent's office. And the real estate agent recognizes the black man, knows he's caught. And instead of just saying, hey, you got me, he stands up angry, punches Marty Friedman in the face, digs a Doberman pincher on the black guy. They fight their way out. Legal letters back and forth. The owners of the home find out. They're horrified, and they agree to sell the family to the black family. The black family says, we'll move in. And I interviewed the black guy, the father of this family, and he says, they moved in and they were like four raisins and a tub of sweet vanilla ice cream. And it was a father, mother, a two year old and a four month old. And then 44 years later, that baby from the crib. That family goes on to be America's fourth black person ever elected to the United States Senate. Me, and I tell people all the time, I am literally here because of one guy who in a chain of events said, I'm going to do an hour more. And he may not have known it in the immediate context. I got a chance to interview him too. But you just do the best you can with what you have where you are. And I think about how many people allow the overwhelm to stifle them from doing that one more hour of volunteer service. Or when you see something in the news that's wrong. You know how many immigrant organizations there are around Los Angeles? They're in New Jersey. Hell, I decided with Alexis, we're going to give a little bit more money to some of these folks so that they can afford lawyers or to a Planned Parenthood this year. Every little bit you do as that locker room speech. Life is a game of inches. And if we all do more, those inches, they add up and they make the difference. And so I just hope everybody listening to your podcast. Yes, life is discouraging. If America hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough. We are in heartbreaking, if not heart shattering times. But it is still within these moments that our actions actually are the most meaningful and can mean the most. And will, I promise you, make more of a difference than you're going to realize in any immediate context of history.
- [37:02]
A
Yeah, that's so great. And that story is just amazing. And that quote that you have, don't let your inability to do everything undermine
- [37:11]
B
your determination to do something
- [37:14]
A
is just the most important thing. When you think about when you wake up in a day, because if it's just whether it's again, reposting something on social media that's giving some attention to something or it's spending your day volunteering or it's giving a dollar to an organization or helping somebody out, like whatever that is, that's that game of interest
- [37:30]
B
that you litter your lives, litter your life with like little small acts of. And you and I are of the age where you, the universe gives me a little blip. Something like I was walking in that same neighborhood, I still live in that same neighborhood neighborhood. And a guy in a suit and everything runs up to me and says, Cory Booker, thank you. Hugs me. He says, when I was down, I was addict. You gave me this advice, told me to go to this agent I turned my life from. Gotta meet my wife. I have no memory of this. I'm like looking at this guy who's thanking me as if I. And so I tell people like litter your life with small acts of kindness. They make more of a difference than you know. You're gonna forget about them. The things that could be the life changing moment to somebody else. Even though the universe may not give you that gift. A little blip to let you know.
- [38:13]
A
I love that everybody should read the book. But you talk about one of the virtues you talk about is truth. And we are in a world where rewriting of history and blatant lies are kind of overtaking our days. How do you navigate a kind of post truth era? How do you sort of not? You know, we talk about getting down in the mud and playing at the same level. But at the same time, that's just not who you are. I know. You're not gonna. You're not gonna do that.
- [38:40]
B
Yeah, no, look, I. I have. Literally, That's a chapter. I have a lot of instructions about what we can do in terms of supporting conversations and people in the media that are out there. Like. Like, we're in a shattered media environment. The people who are truth tellers, elevate them, celebrate them. We have to fight in the realm of public policy. Like the President of the United States right now is trying to tear down slavery narratives at national parks. And I think it's important to do that fighting. But the chapter focuses on a lot of different levels of truth. Again, I can't control anybody else. I can just control myself. And the one thing I want to say just because. And I haven't talked about this much at all in my public life, but there was a moment of my life that I had this shift where suddenly I felt like I was suddenly seeing a truth I never knew existed, which was when I was. I get to Stanford, and my sophomore year, I start working on a suicide crisis hotline. And I just remember how shaken I was because you would sit on these phones and you would get crisis calls. That shook me to my core, because I didn't realize that there was a world out there of domestic violence, of. On our campus. I didn't realize how much rape was prevalent. I didn't realize the magnitude of depression and how many people are struggling with mental health things. LGBTQ calls that we would get of people who were struggling in their coming out as kids, terrified of what families would say, communities would say. And when you talk about truth, it was this moment in my life where I felt like this curtain was pulled back on how I realized all of us are struggling in ways that I just was not aware. And so maybe there's a truth out there that's not just about telling the truth about our history. And Donald Trump cheapens the story of America. He makes us weaker as a nation by not confronting the wretchedness of our past and how we overcame together. But I think there's also this failure of our inability to see the truth, that all of us are flawed human beings struggling, trying to find our way forward. And that perhaps the greatest superpower we can have in a culture like this right now is the empathy, the ability to pay attention to someone, to go a little bit deeper and know the fullness of. Of what we're all struggling with. I. I worry sometimes about a nation that is Scrolling. Where you give your attention for five seconds and you're failing to go deeper. Because I think that the truth of humanity isn't at the surface. It's when we go a lot deeper with each other and really understands that. And that lack of empathy allows so much injustice to fester, whether it's drug addiction like I saw killing my community in Newark. And it wasn't until the opioid crisis seemed to spread a lot more empathy in this world did laws start to change. I see people not understanding the struggles of folks who are struggling with mental health. And mental health care in this country is still in crisis. So I just hope we can get back to the superpower of America being the empathy we have for each other, because I think that's fundamental to knowledge, I think it's fundamental to empathy, and I think it's fundamental ultimately to action.
- [42:17]
A
Yeah. I mean, the challenge when it comes to truth is in the world we're living in with increased AI. But the fact that news media is. A lot of our news media is not getting out the facts to sort of. I mean, I talk about one of the things like a functioning democracy needs the ability to get facts out to its people.
- [42:36]
B
Yeah.
- [42:36]
A
It's very hard to function properly when you don't know what's true and what's not true.
- [42:40]
B
I saw a clip yesterday of a woman who stopped watching Fox News. They were interviewing former MAGA people, and she's just saying, I saw on a PBS documentary about January 6th, and she thought, like, did that happen? Was that real? Because they. She believed what Donald Trump was saying. This was just people partying through and not nothing. It was a tourism trip. It wasn't the beating and ultimately leading to the death of police officers.
- [43:04]
A
How do we, you know, in a post Trump era, which we're hoping is. We're getting. We're getting closer to. How do we start to kind of repair some of this. These things like you look at, like. Let's take USAID for a second. Right. Which was arguably the cheapest. Just talking from a. Just strictly financial. I mean, like, it was one of the greatest investments in the history of the world.
- [43:29]
B
Not.
- [43:29]
A
Let's factor. Let's ignore the fact we were saving millions of lives, like, for a second. Just the fact we were putting in 20, 30, $40 billion a year and seeming as this great country that's trying to help people. How do we start to repair that? Can you. Can we flip the switch back on in usaid?
- [43:48]
B
So this is my area. It's on the Foreign Relations Committee, especially public health, global health, these things are, are. There's so many levels of the damage we did, damage with the countries we were in that we had built up so much goodwill. And now that's flattened. We've created vacancies that the Chinese have filled with different, obviously, philosophies. And we have. You can't just flip it back on when you get a Democratic president. It's going to take a long time to build these things out. And then it had a multiplier effect because so much of our investments in foreign relations and things like USAID were the catalyst to European countries to investing. So I just sat down with Cindy McCain, John McCain's husband, who was running the World Food Program, and she just said it was almost when we pulled back from our investments, we were sort of giving permission to a lot of our allies to do the same. So the tens of thousands of human beings that will have died by this time, this administration's done with that. We are in many ways, I'd say, implicated in is staggering. And it's going to take a lot to not just rebuild it, but to rebuild it the right way. Now, I want us as a country to tell that story better. You and I know the power of storytelling, the power of people understanding. If you interviewed Americans on both sides of the aisle and say, how much money does America spend on countries overseas? People would say 10%, 20%. It's less than $0.01 on every dollar of taxpayers. A fraction of $0.01 is all of our foreign aid. And the return we get on that, let me tell you, when you're fighting treatment resistant tuberculosis out in a foreign nation and infectious disease anywhere is a threat to public health everywhere, like, we got a lot of returns by doing the work we were doing, whether it was fighting against pandemics or in a nation that's only 4% of the planet Earth. And we need markets overseas, helping them create stability and democracy in countries actually has an economic benefit to us in terms of creating markets for our goods. So most Americans didn't understand what they were getting for the fraction of a penny of every tax dollar because nobody was telling that story anymore. Again, you know, and again, I wanted only historians to write for this book. So Doris Kearns Goodwin Meacham, Henry Louis Gates. But what I love about them is these are Ken Burns, these are great storytellers, and I love this parallel to the FDR period. I really do hope we're about to have another New Deal and that we're going to have that kind of leader that can help us bring sweeping legislation. But FDR mastered the media platforms of his time, the fireside chats, the stories he told. Trump is one of the best storytellers there is, and Democrats have not mastered that. If you compare Biden to Trump, Biden was not selling and telling and creating stories, helping people to understand. So imagine if you could find creative ways to help people understand what their tax then you couldn't demonize this by creating these fictions that, oh, all my money's going overseas and I can't, you know, whatever. My family's struggling here where you create this either or us versus them when it never has been. The history of our world is not us versus them. It's just us.
- [47:18]
A
When I was doing some research recently, I had to quadruple check the USAID number because I just kept coming back to 20 or 30 billion dollars. And I was just like, it's got to be 200 to 300 billion or 2 trillion. I mean, I was just like, I couldn't believe it. There's so many. Me, I pick usaid, which is just. It's catastrophic how something that cost us so little money.
- [47:43]
B
Yeah. I just want to give a bit one more visual to people about this because I don't want to gloss over the magnitude of. So when I went to the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet earth right now is in Sudan. And I went there now it's been a few years to the Chad, Sudan border. And I saw human suffering like I've never seen as far as the eye can see. And I stood on the border as refugees were coming over, mostly women carrying malnourished babies. And I've never seen aid workers. And I've been again in refugee camps all across the planet, But I've never seen anything like this kind of destitution. And I've never had aid workers grab and pull at me to tell me America needs to do more. Americans there with all that trauma, saying we've got to step up and do more. And then I will never forget the horror to me when Trump gets elected. And then those people who were standing in the breach in Sudan and Chad are now back in the United States, traumatized by the fact that they're not there. And then America pulled the rug out from underneath them. And so that's the immediacy I feel when we use these acronyms, usaid. These are people to me that I've seen in the field saving lives in the worst, most unimaginable human suffering. America was there and so we are a nation that has allowed a man to come into office who as a Christian, as one of the Abrahamic faiths, Abraham, keep your tent open on all four sides. Welcome the stranger. The whole ideals of, I think of all of our global faiths are being so perverted by this person in office as he racks up more deficit. It's not like he is saving money or healing our deficits. His fiscal policy is so horrific. So we're being, as I say, penny wise and pound foolish in terms of the suffering that has been unleashed in humanity.
- [49:57]
A
There's so many horrific things that he's done. He's going to be his legacy, he's going to leave behind. I keep coming back to Iran being the thing that is really, in some ways is probably going to be the worst and the most the biggest effect on our country and around the world. Am I wrong? Am I? I mean, it could be generations before we get Iran back to where it was prior to him being in office.
- [50:24]
B
So literally about 24 hours before the attack, I was sitting with one of our Arab allies where they were beseeching me not to let this happen because remember, this was a horrific period where Iran was slaughtering its own people and the regime was really in crisis. It was losing any shred of legitimacy it had with its own people. And they were trying to communicate to me that it may not be immediate, but this regime is going to crumble. We have them where we want them. Do not do this. You will make the regime stronger. And that is exactly what Donald Trump did, is he's made us weaker in terms of any leverage we have. He has made them stronger as they've now realized. Just like Ukraine with low cost drones. You may have bombed our navy and our air force, but we are now seeing drone technology and our ability to cause utter disruption in that area. That we can endure that disruption longer than you can endure it because we're shocking the whole global economy. He achieved none of his specific goals. Whether it's helping the Iranian people, which he said help us on his own way, that was a lie. He has not gotten rid of their ability long term for ballistic missiles. Their highly enriched uranium is still in country. There's been no regime change. He said he was going to get unconditional surrender. Well, it seems like the only person that surrendered unconditionally is him. So this is a disaster. I don't know in the rank of his disasters. Remember, he saved the best for the last in his first term with storming of the Capitol. There's a lot more Donald Trump left and a lot more bad things are going to happen. But this really, really did upset the whole order in that region. And frankly, given the ambitions that democratic nations have, and it just has really been it will go down as one of the most colossal failures, blunders of a president in the modern era.
- [52:22]
A
Yeah. Talking about that region for a second, obviously, Israel is top of mind for many people on a regular basis. You have been a vocal defender of Israel forever. You've also not a supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu. Their election's coming up. Hopefully he will no longer be in power. But how do youit seems like there are so many people in our community, countries with a lot of Jewish people who specifically who kind of can't separate those two things. It's either you support Israel to the end or you don't. And Netanyahu is sort of the leader of who's kind of caused a lot of our rift and what's happening in our country today. And so how do you grapple with that and how do you sort of talk to people when they come in and say that to you?
- [53:16]
B
So for me, it's like you've got to have clarity on what your values are. There's no nation. I love America, but when America's doing wrong, I'm going to fight to stop that wrong. I don't have a blind nationalism, and neither do Israelis. I mean, the Israeli opposition against Netanyahu is. I mean, remember it wasn't that long ago that Israelis were marching in the streets trying to stop this man from tearing down their constitution. I don't have to go down a pathway of just explaining how Netanyahu and Trump are two of the most disastrous world leaders we have. But I just want to keep pulling anybody back to the core values of what we all should be focused on. Values are bigger than nationhood. The reality is, and these are fundamental, as a person who studies Torah to this day, these are fundamental Jewish values is that the security in that region is ultimately going to be dependent upon the finding a way to achieve what are inseparable truths, that there can be no Israeli security without Palestinian autonomy. And there cannot be Palestinian autonomy unless there's Israeli security. And that is the trap that these two cousins in the Abrahamic faith that live side by side have interwoven destinies. And I know how people want to say I'm pro Palestinian or I'm pro Israeli. You're fighting against yourself in that sense. The idea that we're going to solve this in any other way by coming to that conclusion that the Palestinian people should have autonomy, security, control their own destiny, and that the Israeli people should have autonomy, security and control their own destiny. That's the end. This will not end until we achieve both of these, of those things. And so I know our politics is frozen and conflicted. And by the way, so much of our Internet traffic on this is coming from other countries who know if they can create more hate and anger within the Democratic Party, it's crippling to them. The RNC was doing this as well, trying to aggravate this fissure. What I'm trying to do is say, however passionate you are on these issues, the end of this we are not going to get to until both of those things have been achieved, that there is security, autonomy, independence for both peoples.
- [56:05]
A
Right? Yeah. I hope more people can come to that realization. And it seems so obvious to me. I mean, that's sort of belief you should have for everybody who lives in this earth. Right? I mean, that's really all that seems pretty simple. You know, I, you know, October 7th now is, you know, a few years with the anniversary coming up. It's, you know, it's amazing how that rift has caused what it's caused in our country and what it's led to. Fracturing of friendships and relationships, relationships and communities, and anti Semitism in America is at an all time high. I'm curious, when you talk to people, and I heard you in conversation with Rabbi Sharon Brauss, who's my rabbi, What's the message to just sort of trying to get those sort of people who have these kind of blinders on and who think the US should unilaterally send arms to Israel and gotten really, and that's obviously been really one of the most controversial things when it comes to a policy issue. How did you have those conversations with people when it comes to arms specifically?
- [57:34]
B
So again, and I tell myself this in my office, this all the time, we are trying to be a force to end the conflict, end the suffering and the death in that community. We have to always figure out how. We need to try to focus on being a force of peace and ending this moral nightmare that's going on for Israelis, for people living in, in Gaza, for what's happening in the west bank, which is nightmarish right now. We have to use all of our energy to be a force for good. We have to be truth tellers about the Israeli security, truth tellers about Palestinian suffering. But there's often narratives being used to pursue political agendas. As opposed to pursue peace and an end to this conflict. And so this is something you and I talked about this before this interview started about. There's no room for nuance. People are looking on both sides of this conversation for any signal that either you're with me or you're against me, because it's binary to them. It's us versus them. But hardened binary views are not going to bring about peace or security. It's just not going to happen. And so I. We all need hard lines. There's no room for hate. The fact that the FBI will tell you right now that of all the religious hate and there's rising hate against religion in this country, you're seeing rising attacks on Muslim Americans, Sikh Americans, Hindu Americans. But the rise of antisemitism dwarfs them all. And we as a nation should be talking about that crisis and dealing with it and fundamentally, unflinchingly telling that truth. Especially if you are not Jewish, as a black guy, having to be the person that speaks up on racism all the time, it's fatiguing. But this is where alliances are so vital. So I just, in every way possible, as a non Jew, want to be talking about the. These issues with nuance. When it comes to Israel in the conversation at home, I think we need to be a force for peace and healing. And then in the fight against hate, finally, we need to be uncompromising in doing everything possible to address those forces of hate. I worry about a lot of what our own law enforcement is doing these days. Remember, Donald Trump has unraveled effort to go after hate crimes, trying to redefine them in ways that don't protect minorities like the past. So every day, the question I hope people ask themselves is, what is the value here I'm pursuing and am I being a constructive force to that, or am I contributing more towards the not just tensions, not just problems, but even to the violence or deepening of divides that's going on.
- [60:40]
A
Yeah, I mean, you're really in the bullseye of it, right? I mean, you are a black man who has studied more Torah than most Jews. And those communities in particular have seemed to have some of the biggest rifts in America. Two communities that have been intertwined for generations working together. I'm sure you've had some very tough conversations. I'm sure you've had people angry at you. How do you kind of stay kind of steadfast and how do you sort of mitigate and navigate those scenarios?
- [61:20]
B
Every day you get up and do the best you possibly can in Service of the people and the values you hold most dear. I gave up especially on issues of foreign policy because I've seen this. I mean Israel is not the only area but God, when I supported the JCPOA I had across the political spectrum the hate I got from pro Israel friends of mine, how could you support the jcpoa? Looks a lot different today. But back then lost friendships over that I could give you a lot of personal stories have shown me that at the end of the day you get up and just do what you believe in your heart is right, noble and just on these issues and try to stay a force for good in them and let people's opinion of you. They'll come what may. But you know my, my goal. You know the story I told you earlier. I was raised by parents who told me with clarity how the Civil rights movement and voting rights movement and all the values that were earned by blood, sweat and tears of my ancestors weren't just black ancestors. You know, some of the great abolitionists weren't just Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, but they were white Americans as well. The Civil rights movement was not just black Americans. It was Latino Americans and white Americans and Pacific Islanders. So Iowa debt, my parents would always say. And there were definitely stories of Jewish heroism that was stunning. And then I moved to Newark and I'm around the corner from where Johann Prince, one of the five people to speak at the Mall in the march on Washington, his shuls was in Newark. And you see still to this day Black and Jewish alliance that doesn't make the news, you know, like the week Wake High School which used to be. This is Philip Roth, what he writes about whenever most of his books are taking pace in the Week Wake section of Newark and now the Jewish community has left Newark. But to see what the Week Wake Alumni association powered by so many Jewish New Jerseyans and beyond do for a mostly now black school is so moving to me. So the alliance continues. It's not what's celebrated and for me again, I've only got what you got. We only have 24 hours every day. I'm going to do the best I can to be a force of healing, truth telling. A lot of the virtues that I tell there. Do I get it right every day? No. Do I miss opportunities? I write about a lot of the mistakes I've made in the book as well. But I think net net if we're all focused on that, we're going to move our country through this crisis, this division, this strain and get to the place where you and I talked about before, where we can maybe reimagine and create for ourselves a more beloved community.
- [64:27]
A
I love that. You said we only have 24 hours in a day. You did speak for 25 hours and about five minutes. So, you know, you might have broken that. That rule, right? I still think you could have gone to, like, 26. I gotta be honest. I was watching, and you were stopping.
- [64:44]
B
I honestly, like, looked at my. Looked at my. My chief staff. She's amazing. Veronica Duran. And she pulled me. She's just like, okay, we've broken the record. You know, let's. Let's. Everybody's here. You could keep going. But I. It's like. It's like I was being carried the last five hours when my body. You and I both know this as former athletes. Like, your body has limits, but your spirit has none. And so I was. I left my body a long time ago, and I was riding high because there's such great energy in that room.
- [65:12]
A
If Veronica was the one who pulled you, then it's okay then.
- [65:14]
B
Okay.
- [65:15]
A
If it was just you, I would have been let down.
- [65:18]
B
What.
- [65:19]
A
You know, looking back now and there was, you know, six months ago or so, is there, like, one moment you can kind of take out of that? And something that came directly out of that that you feel. I mean, you touched so many great topics throughout that I watched a fair amount of it. And that was the amazing part, is just these letters you read. And I just learned so much. But is there something that wasn't a specific thing you were. It wasn't one Bill that you were fighting for, fighting against? That was one of. One of the, you know, interesting aspects of it. But is there something that you are most proud of besides breaking this record by this man who made him, not the men, the greatest representative of our nation's history?
- [65:59]
B
So I. This sounds like a roundabout way of answering this question. So I went. In 2005, I knew we were gonna. I was gonna become mayor in 2006. I was just sure of it. But my Spanish was bad. So I go. I go to. For Christmas and New Year's, I go to do intensive Spanish in Ecuador. And there's a mountain there, their highest mountain, Pinchincha. It's a sloping mountain that you can actually march up. And I'm thinking, okay, I think it's 15, 16,000ft. I don't know what it is, but it's high up there. And so me and my friends. And this is 2005, so 20 years ago, I was in much Better shape. And I just remember getting to this point where I could barely even feel my legs and I could see the mountaintop but couldn't get there. And I remember me and my friends just lay down. One of my friends was like, just leave me here. And the little Ecuadorian guy there gets up around us and starts a slow chant. I'll never forget the words. Konanimo, Konanimo, vamos ha subir Konanimo kananimo vamos has sever with emotion, with passion. With passion. We're going to get to the top. And I don't know where we found the energy, but we got back up and we kept walking up that mountain. And so I say that all to say is, like, this was historically important to me because Strom Thurmond held that record. But what my hope was is that we could be somebody when at a time that was what, March, April. Trump had just been elected. And I think a lot of us were feeling like we just wanted to lay down on that mountain. And I think we all are. We all are connected more than we know. And I wanted that day to be a little bit of a ignition point or inspiration for people. We got a long fight, a long, much longer to go until we get to the mountaintop. But we got to keep going. We got to keep fighting. And the afterwards, I was stunned. I mean, on one platform alone, tick tock, over 330 million people liked the content. Not even watch it, liked the content. And then you had the Senate that receives letters. They said they've just never seen anything like it. Thousands and thousands, if not tens of thousands of people writing in from all over the country about what it meant, kids letters and everything. And so I felt like maybe for one moment on the side of the mountain, it was my turn to try to try to get people excited about continuing this very hard journey. We have to get through this administration.
- [68:18]
A
Well, I was proud of you at that moment as a friend, and I was in awe of you. Looking back, what was the hardest physical aspect of it?
- [68:28]
B
I mean, how much biology do you want to discuss? How do you. How do you not go to the bathroom for 25 hours? I mean, that was the part I knew I could. Fasting. I do, but I've never. I get up two times in the middle of night, go to the bathroom now. So. So dehydrating myself was the scariest. Dehydrating myself was the scariest thing. And it had my, my. I need to give my cousin Pam, Pam Herbert, like, a lot of credit. She's emergency room doctor when she found out how I was going to hack it by just not drinking for like a day. Plus beforehand she's just like, are you kidding me? Walking stroke risk. She goes. And so she sat in the gallery right above me the whole time, never left that like perch. And she goes, if you show any signs of distress, like physical distress, I'm going to swoop. I don't care. It'll take 10 security guards to stop me from pulling you off of that floor. And so, you know, lots of things when you dehydrated because you've been there before, you're cramping up and stuff like that. So that was the physically hard stuff.
- [69:30]
A
That was a big moment. Right. And it was a big kick in the ass to a lot of people and a lot of Democrats. I think at the same time, we're still not seeing a lot of the Democrats that we need to see. And there are people doing great things. I don't want to take light of that. But you know, I think, and you keep talking about this idea of how we're going to fight back against Trump and MAGA and this, you know, hoping what comes in the future, this big sweeping plans. The average person couldn't even tell you what it means to be a Democrat today. Yeah, I mean the messaging of the Democratic Party is as atrocious as it could possibly be. So my first question to you here is like, what is, does it mean to be a Democrat today?
- [70:17]
B
Well, I think the Democrats have been feckless and have failed and helped help pave the road. I said this during the 24 hour speech. We helped pave the road. They made lots of mistakes. And so my hope is that we are going to reinvent the brand, reinvent the party. In fact, that we are going to put forward a vision. And I've already started this because I think when I say we, there are tens of thousands of Democrats elected at all offices. You know, I was just swearing in a 24 year old to be a mayor of this town in New Jersey, that he's just amazing human being. So there's thousands and thousands of Democrats out there, but I think we need to be a party of bold vision again that can deliver real results for people. I've started to articulate some of what I think that policy should be. There should be an immediacy to it. I think that if we can get elected and control the House, the Senate and the White House in 2029, January 2029, we should immediately, just like FDR came in and upended a bunch of things. I think we need to immediately come in and upend a bunch of things to make people feel that immediately. And I think it should be the tax code immediately. I think we should raise the standard deduction for families to $75,000, which would mean most Americans do not pay income tax anymore, which would. The way I designed the bill, it would give pretty much 70 to 80% of Americans a 10% raise. You keep 10% more of your money, which would be a game changer for families. Whether it's the single mom on my block makes $60,000 a year, she'd suddenly make $66,000, $67,000. Game changer. What she could do for her family. A couple in New Jersey making $110,000 a year, two kids, they keep 11,000 more of their dollars. Game changer. So I think we've got to do some things immediately as a party, because I think that Biden accomplished a lot of things, but most people didn't feel the CHIPS act, didn't feel the Infrastructure act at a time that there was a lot of economic pain. People couldn't name one thing that that administration did to make them feel better.
- [72:24]
A
I'm gonna stop you.
- [72:25]
B
Yeah.
- [72:26]
A
Sorry. You're my friend, so I can stop you.
- [72:27]
B
Yeah.
- [72:28]
A
What does it mean to be a Democrat? Why. Why do you. Why should someone be a Democrat? Sell me. I'm not a Democrat.
- [72:34]
B
What's the quick. What's the trailer?
- [72:36]
A
What's.
- [72:37]
B
The only thing I'll say back to you as a friend is I want to sell you on being an American. I want to sell you on that this party is going to redeem the dream of America. My grandfather was, as I told you earlier, he was a Republican. He became a Democrat because of his love of this country. Finally, there's a party that's about workers rights and civil rights and all of that. I'm not in this to be a great Democrat. I'm in this to, as I told you at the beginning of the conversation, to save my country. I think we are in a crisis right now, and I think we need to reimagine our country. I don't care if the person, whatever the person called themselves like that, whatever the label they put on them. I think we need to stand for something that is about America more than a party. If the Democratic Party was less concerned about the Democratic Party, we probably wouldn't be in as much of this mess. I want a vision for our country. I think the Democratic Party makes a mistake Right now by telling everybody what they're against and not articulating a vision for what our country should stand for.
- [73:39]
A
What should our country stand for?
- [73:41]
B
I will say three things. We should be the best nation on the planet Earth to raise a family. The best nation on the planet Earth for everyone to be safe and strong and be able to economically thrive. That we are a country that, that, that actually creates right here the most fertile soil for human achievement. That's, that's America to me. And I think that most families, they don't feel a Democratic party has made them safer, more economically strong or made the future better than the past. And that's a failing. I want our nation again for people to feel this is a great country. This is the best country for my family to thrive. This is the best country that gives me the greatest hope for the future for my family where I know every night my family is secure and strong. And dammit, when I work in this economy, I'm getting my just rewards that this economy is working for my family. And I simple, I love that and
- [74:43]
A
that speaks to me, that inspires me. I think Democrats have been and I appreciate you not trying to try and make it so. Democrats, Republicans and Americans. And I think that's important. But obviously we are stuck in a two party system and it is.
- [74:55]
B
Yeah, but if I have my way and you're my friend, you know, I'm up for reelection now. But I told you it's a five year, my five year plan is for us to get there as a country so that by 2030 most Americans are saying, heck yeah, I'm so proud to be an American. We are a nation that stands for families. We are a nation that stands for human thriving, human flourishing. We're a country that I believe in us now and I believe that tomorrow is even better. Like that's really what I want to get to. I'm not interested in just vanquishing Republicans. Sure, I want to win this midterms left and right, but I don't want to get us to get in office and say, hey, Democrats won. No, you didn't win until you delivered for the American people. And that's my frustration right now with party politics in our country and my disappointments with my own party is the game is more important than it sometimes it seems. And I say this all in generalities because as soon as I say this, I get these flashes of people I work with in the Senate, people I see in local offices all around this country. Everybody gets up in the morning not to be A great Democrat. They get up in the morning to be a great mayor, a great city council person, a great county leader, a great governor. And my job when I was mayor was to bring people together across the lines that divide us and affirm the ties that bind us. And that's what I want to get back to. I wish the last Democratic president, president we had stood up and said, hey, I accept the Democratic nomination, but I'm not trying to be the Democratic President of America. I'm trying to be the great American president. I want everybody in this country for us to understand we still have common cause and we need to get back to the work of America, because America is faltering right now in these categories. We should not be the country with the most expensive health care on the planet and the worst outcomes of developed nations. We should not be in a country where one of the most dangerous things you can do in our country is have a child because of maternal mortality rates. We should not be in a country where 15, 20% of us are taking medications for our mental health. We should not be in a nation the leading cause of death for our children is gun violence. We can't protect our own children. You can go through all the things that we should not be that are an offense to the very idea of what it means to be an American and that are counter to the vision I told you about where we're. Every family is safe, strong, and economically secure. So I just want us to get back to that dream, and I don't want us to fall into this trap we're in right now, which is I hate Republicans. I hate them so much, I'm not even listening to their good ideas. You know, and that's a recipe for us continuing to devolve. Because there's nothing that frustrates me more in the Senate when I know we all agree on universal background checks, but we can't pass. When I say we all American as a whole agree, but we can't pass legislation. I know we all agree that it's crazy that from UCLA to Rutgers, we have the smartest people on the planet Earth coming in to study at our top universities. And then we kick them out right away because they can't get a visa to stay here yet they want to start a business that would create generational change in terms of economic opportunity. There's so much stupid. When I was mayor of the city of Newark, I used to tell my team, let's just attack stupid first. We'll leave the great ideas for later. Let's just stop the stupid. And we do so much stupid. Like one of the biggest areas of our expense is in the military and we can't even audit ourselves. I mean, there's just so much dumb in this country going on that we're allowing to happen that it's an insult to the dignity of Americans all across the political spectrum.
- [78:30]
A
I like to consider myself a moderate. Common sense. I feel like you're in that same ballpark. Republican Party was obviously co opted and overtaken by maga and it is really two separate parties. Right? I mean, you know better than I know. I don't want to totally compare the same thing. But obviously in the Democrats now we're seeing the Democratic socialists really make a big impact and big inroads. And I don't want to lump all of them together. And I'm sure there are people with good, interesting ideas. But you mentioned safety and you hear about candidates who want to eliminate police or want to eliminate prisons or don't want to punish murderers or want to eliminate immigration enforcement and have open borders and a lot of those things that will make our country less safe. Just point blank. I mean, very full stop. Are you concerned about the Democratic Socialists of America, the dsa? Are you concerned that it's making a bigger impact on our party and on your colleagues? And how do you plan to handle that?
- [79:38]
B
I will always be concerned about extremes. I must have mentioned this three or four times in our party that things are not good. The Mitt Romney conversation I had before he left is one of my favorite moments where he did something in his farewell speech that every senator wants to have done to them. He's like, you know, and I think there's people on, even on the other side of that would make great presidents like Cory Booker. At which point I run off the Senate floor, call my mom and I'm like, C SPAN now, Mom, C SPAN now. Mitt Romney just said I might be a great president. But I went to go see him and he said this perfectly. He goes, both parties are in this terrible contest to see who can be the permanent minority party in America. And he goes, the party that gets it right. It's that mighty middle that can actually create a new durable governing reality in America. That's what I dream of. And that doesn't mean you don't do bold things like making healthcare affordable for every American, like a human right. That doesn't mean you don't do bold things like getting rid of the endemic corruption that allows senators to trade stocks, governors. I mean, excuse me, Presidents to have crypto coins and Supreme Court justices to take unlimited gifts from billionaires. We need, like, again, fdr, massive, bold things, but I'm going to be the guy that's fighting for the Democratic Party to be the big tent party that holds the middle and the majority of this country and calls everybody together. If everybody in your coalition agrees with you on everything, your coalition's not big enough. There are going to be differences. But I'm still one of these people that believes there are 75% of Americans that should come together around the big things that right now we can't get done but support the leaders that actually will start to deliver on the promise of America.
- [81:31]
A
You're seeing some candidates today that don't have the morals that I believe should have as candidates. Donald Trump, whose people call the abuser in chief, has set a new bar for what that means when it comes to how they conduct themselves in life. Graham Platner is one of those people in particular, as of this moment, he has not dropped out of the race, but the Democratic Party and different people in Democratic operations sort of didn't vet him properly. Didn't, didn't get in the way of him running. He hasn't been proven of some of these charges. So, you know, we do live in a society that's you're innocently proven guilty, but there are enough of them that we all know he shouldn't be the nominee. How do we stop these things from happening and stop someone like Graham Platner in many ways?
- [82:24]
B
Yeah. Well, first of all, I think before people listen to this, Graham Platner will have dropped out.
- [82:28]
A
Right.
- [82:28]
B
I, I really, I really. Let me step into the future. Whoever's listening to this right now is listening to us. And Grant Platner's dropped out. I can't see how he's going to stay on this race. I think virtue matters, man. And I think that whatever you can say about these imperfect genius that were our founders, and dear God, they were, they wrestled in public spaces about ideas of what it means to be virtuous. And I think that we are going to see the pendulum swing back away from not in the kind of, I think, the extremes on my side of the aisle where this kind of like thought police, where you, like, cancel people for having different ideas. But I'm just talking about there is a space for public virtue for people to exhibit but the best of our ideals and to be held accountable when they hold the worst. And that's why my book is fundamentally formed around 10 public virtues so I really hope that you and I are having this conversation a few years from now where we say, God, we're feeling it again. And one of the reasons why I know it's. I got a little, great little preview of what I think the future is. When we dipped into the past and the Obamas had their unveiling of their, of their library, and so many people came back and said to me, like, I forgot that we could have leaders that we could look up to. And I know there's a lot of understandable critique of any president, but nobody could say that they weren't people of character who tried their best every day, made mistakes, were flawed, but they tried to exhibit in the public space the best of who they were and call us to that same level. I think we're gonna, I think that's what's. And by the way, we tend to have presidents that are opposites of what's there. I really do believe that the next president of the United States is gonna be somebody who strives for moral excellence.
- [84:20]
A
Yeah. Looking at that photo of the president, I was just like, I'd go get a George Bush tattoo to get that guy back. Whatever I could do to get George Bush back on his 80. Happy birthday. Recording this a few days after his 80th birthday. And I mean, it's just, it's amazing. What I mean, that's a person, by the way, who probably has benefited the most from the Donald Trump's presidency. Just from a brand standpoint, he's every Democrat's favorite president.
- [84:48]
B
Yes. But even, even his worst mistake, a Middle east war.
- [84:52]
A
Yeah.
- [84:52]
B
We couldn't learn that.
- [84:53]
A
Right.
- [84:54]
B
We're embroiled in another one.
- [84:58]
A
You've been a mayor, a senator, presidential candidate, and you've been an exceptional senator. You are an amazing legislator. The 2028 election is coming up. How do you go through the process of deciding if you should run for president again, if you should stay in the Senate? What's your. I'm not gonna make you, I'm not gonna make you answer a question you won't answer.
- [85:27]
B
Well, no, you're my friend and I, And I'm like looking at this red dot on me right now. No, look, I am definitely actively going through that process because, as you know, personally, I'm. Now, I'm not making a decision for myself. I have this extraordinary partner in life and we want to have children. And so there's a lot more to consider. But I really believe in this five year mission of this country right now. And I think that I would feel such anguish if we lose the opportunity to do that American renewal that I so badly want, and that sort of the ability to redeem that dream. That is the dream of America, which I think we're losing with a lot of Americans. So I'm going to think hard and long, about 28, and it excites me, the prospect of running again. But there's also a lot of good leaders out there. I mean, the bench in the Democratic Party is very impressive.
- [86:21]
A
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I've talked about it, and some people laughed at me, but I think the Democratic bench is as deep as it's ever been. And I. The reference I used to use is it's. It's like the greatest Swiss army knife of all time.
- [86:38]
B
Yes.
- [86:39]
A
And we. When you think about the TV series Lord of the Flies, I was just watching, and these boys start out with nothing, and they are on this deserted island, and you may think the first thing they need is a knife or the saw or some sort of weapon of some sort, but what they need is the magnifying glass to start a fire. And if you look at yourself and you look at Wes Moore and you look at Joshua Shapiro and you look at Pete Buttigieg, and you look. And the list goes on and on and on. J.B. pritzker, we have something for everybody right now, and we haven't had a real primary in a long time in the Democratic Party. And I think it's really exciting.
- [87:22]
B
I think it's the best process at a time that we need big, vision, capable people, and we don't know where this moment in history is going to be and who's going to be the right leader to emerge at the right time. The faith I have is not even in our bench. It's in this country and its ability in really pivotal moments, from JFK to FDR to Lincoln, we've had these moments of real crisis where the right leader and the right leadership teams have emerged. I think we're in this crisis. I don't want to be in any way inviting this, but I think actually the last two and a half years of Donald Trump are going to be far worse than even what we've seen so far. So I think we're going to be coming into a presidential election two years from now where we are even more of a country caught in a crisis. So I'm excited about the. All the possibilities we have for that, America's reinvention. It's time that we have another one
- [88:30]
A
in our country before we get to 28. We obviously have the midterms. All odds look like the House will go back to Democrats. The Senate is up in the air. Where should people be looking at right now as important races to focus energy and time on?
- [88:50]
B
So there will be a new candidate in Maine, and we all need to get behind them. They're going to start from zero in fundraising. North Carolina, we need to pick that up. But that's looking pretty good with a great candidate there. Alaska is vital and she's fighting a great race there. Ohio, I was just campaigning with Sherrod and what a great man he is. So those are four states that could get us there. But here are the ones that people aren't thinking about that I hope people invest a little bit of themselves into. One is Texas. I was just down in Texas. What an inspiring candidate he is. Another one is Iowa. We actually have a real shot, a fighting chance right now. It's still a long shot, but I think we can win that election. And here's the one that's going to surprise you, but I hope everybody helps Scott out is Mississippi.
- [89:41]
A
Yeah.
- [89:42]
B
I'm telling you right now, he has a better chance of winning that race than I did my first race in Newark. And so.
- [89:49]
A
And I won.
- [89:49]
B
And he's. He's. So those would be the races I would say with. And the only other thing I want to say is there are two big ones we got to continue to defend with. John is doing a phenomenal job in Georgia. We need to continue to back him and then whoever comes out of this Michigan primary. Michigan's vital, too. So there is a pathway back to the Senate majority, and it will be to get the House and the Senate would put us in a position to truly check this president and even more so, put us in a position actually to send bills to his desk and dare him not to sign him for the party that's now in control of the article. One branch of government to actually show that they're ready to govern by putting sensible bill after sensible bill on his desk and challenging him not to sign things that would actually help people's pain points in this country.
- [90:43]
A
Last thing. And you talk about this in a book a bit. You have people who don't want to put up American flags today, who don't want to root for the USA soccer team, who have just lost their way with America. It's, you know, we're just after the 250th birthday. What's your message to those people? Like, if you're speaking to them, what
- [91:11]
B
are you saying one of my favorite chapters that I wrote was about patriotism? And in that chapter, I tell one of the most cinematic stories from American history that y' all out here should be making a movie out of. And it's the movie of a slave ship right after the fort sumter and the start of the civil war called the planter that carries munitions for the Confederate army. On that ship is a enslaved man named Robert smalls, who is brilliant. He believes in something I know you believe in, which it's better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than have an opportunity and not be. Be prepared. So all he does while he's doing his menial labor is study the captain. Studies his mannerisms, study how he navigates the currents, study the whistles. He goes to get past the forts, and then one day, the opportunity comes. All the white people leave the boat to go into town for something. And in the pitch black of night, he signals to the families to bring the slaves. Families. He puts on the captain's jacket, the captain's straw hat, and he takes the boat out of the. Out of the harbor and starts sailing it past fortification after fortification, getting every whistle, every signal, navigating the boat like he is the captain. The same mannerisms, same gait as the captain, and they just, in the dark of night, wave him through with only the starlight. They see somebody that looks like the captain, they believe it's him. Now he gets to fort sumpner and this mighty fort with its powerful cannons. They signal they're all nervous on the boat. They signal that the signals are accepted. Then instead of going past, they turn the boat, and they make a beeline for the union line, the Union blockade. And by the time they realize what's happened, he's out of cannon range. But now he's got a terrible problem. He's a Confederate flag ship charging at the Union blockade. The captain of the onward, the lead ship, as the commercial record shows, was loading his cannons, getting ready to fire at this charging ship. He runs, pulls down the Confederate flag, grabs a bed sheet and throws it up. And at the last second, through just the starlight, they realize it's a surrendering ship. I wish I could be at this moment in history where the onward pulls up next to. Excuse me. Where the planter pulls up next to the onward. All the sailors, all these white men run to the railing to see who's captaining the ship, and they see a ship full of black guys. And Robert smalls strides over, still in the captain's Jacket looks at the men and then looks up at the American flag and points to the flag and says, excuse me, sir, can I get one of those for my ship? And at that moment, his wife comes out holding her daughter under the shoulders, lifts the daughter up, makes the daughter look at the American flag and says, that flag, that flag will do us some good. If escaped slaves can look at the American flag when slavery was written into the Constitution and still believe in its promise and its ability to correct and heal and evolve, if that can still be the symbol, who are we to give up on this country? You and I, from ancestry, who loved this nation. Even when this nation didn't love our ancestors back, they still believed in it. And then they fought for it and cried into the soil of this country, bled into the soil of this country. I love America because we are a nation of people that never gave up on the dream and gave their best measure of devotion to make the dream real. And we've inherited that. And I'm not giving up on it. I'm not abandoning all that they fought for. I'm going to actually take my responsibility to try to make this nation better than we got it and actually try to achieve the same dreams of a slave, dreams of an immigrant, the dreams of a native person, to try to make them real in our time, that's. To me, patriotism is to love our country. And here's the trick about patriotism for all those people that love the stars and stripes. You can't love your country unless you love your fellow countrymen and women. You may not always like them, you may not always agree with them, but unless we have that bond of brotherhood and sisterhood, of love, we're gonna lose ourselves. That I'm committed to you because I've dealt with people in my life, irrational patriots. Not the kind that wave flags, but the kind that charge into buildings that are burning to save strangers that might vote different than them or pray different than them or police officers. I had these officers that shots were fired in a building. They had no situational awareness and they ran in to try to save people they don't know what. That's patriotism. Blacks and whites, Christians and Jews on beaches from Normandy to Iwo Jima. That's patriotism. So we may not be called to that level of love, but we can't show decency and respect to people, even if we vehemently disagree with them. So I love our symbols. I want people to raise the flags like Robert Smalls, but I also want them to show their love of country and how they treat their fellow countrymen and women.
- [96:44]
A
Senator Booker, I'm honored to call you a friend and I appreciate you joining us and I can't wait to see what you keep doing. And most importantly, I can't wait to see potentially a child at some point in the near future. So good luck with that. I love you.
- [97:01]
B
I love you man. Very much. So, very much so. Thank you for this opportunity.
- [97:04]
A
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Lunch with Jamie. As always, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter@jamieslist.com for my thoughts on all things food, pop culture, politics and more. And remember to join these online conversations and ask my guests questions in real time. Sign up to get a paid subscriber. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Audible and be sure to leave a review. Thanks and see you next time.