Cory Booker on How to Defeat Donald Trump

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Cory Booker on How to Defeat Donald Trump

The New Yorker Radio Hour (WNYC Studios & The New Yorker)
Date: September 27, 2019
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Senator Cory Booker

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Episode Overview

In this episode, David Remnick sits down with Senator Cory Booker, then a Democratic presidential candidate for 2020, for an in-depth discussion about the turmoil of the Trump presidency, the urgency and strategy of impeachment, and the challenges facing the Democratic Party. The conversation also explores Booker’s views on political courage, his personal background, criminal justice reform, and approaches to health care. The tone is candid, impassioned, and—especially from Booker—grounded in both story and moral argument.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment (00:10–02:17)

• Moment of “constitutional vandalism”: Cory Booker expresses alarm at President Trump undermining constitutional checks and balances.

  “For me, this is a moment of constitutional vandalism like I’ve never seen in my lifetime.”
  —Cory Booker [00:10]

• Initially hesitant about impeachment, Booker states the threshold was crossed when Congress was blocked from effectively investigating.

• Moral Imperative Over Politics: Booker and Remnick reflect on Speaker Pelosi’s hesitancy to pursue impeachment, suggesting that moral action should override short-term political costs.

  “This is a moment, a moral moment, that we should stand up and say... the precedent that it sets is whoever... Trash the Constitution and the checks and balances, because if the politics don’t line up, you’re not gonna be impeached.”
  —Cory Booker [01:48]

2. 2020 Campaign Struggles and the Electability Debate (03:17–06:50)

• Polls and Long-Shot Narratives: Booker downplays poor polling numbers, emphasizing that past winners (Carter, Clinton, Obama) were initially underdogs.

  “Nobody in the Democratic Party who’s ever been polling ahead right now in a presidential race has ever gone on to be president.”
  —Cory Booker [03:37]

• Booker’s Unique Message: He positions himself as a candidate focused on “civic grace” and healing, not ideological extremes. He resists pundit divides between “progressive” and “moderate.”

  “I just think that the theme of this election is not fight fire with fire... It really comes to the core of King. One of my favorite quotes from King, which is what we have to repent for... is not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people.”
  —Cory Booker [06:09]

3. The Human Experience of Campaigning (06:50–08:41)

• Endurance & Surprises: Booker compares his mayoral campaign in Newark (recounted in the documentary Street Fight) with the presidential run.

  “It is a physical endurance test and it does reveal who you are and how you deal and what kind of campaign that you run.”
  —Cory Booker [07:30]

• Goodness of People: Despite polarization, Booker remarks on kindness from rival supporters.

  “I had people in other candidates’ T-shirts saying, ‘Oh, I’m an X person supporter, but need you in this race, man, I gave you five bucks.’ And there is a decency and a goodness.”
  —Cory Booker [08:45]

4. Fighting Trump and Rejecting Hate (09:45–11:14)

• Rejecting Tit-for-Tat Hostility: Booker consistently argues for fighting Trump not by stooping to insult or hate.

  “We didn’t beat Bull Connor because we brought bigger dogs and bigger fire hoses... But we had artists of activism who called to the moral imagination of this country and created, excited and ignited new majorities.”
  —Cory Booker [10:13]

• Personal Anecdote: Booker tells a story about refusing to meet Trump’s aggression with personal animosity, echoing Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high.”

  “Dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face. And I look at him and I go, dude, that’s a felony. And just said, sit down, Let me explain to you why that’s the exact wrong approach…”
  —Cory Booker [09:00]

5. Race, Upbringing, and Political Lessons Learned (11:14–17:38)

• Booker recounts his family’s struggles integrating into a New Jersey suburb, supported by a white lawyer’s sting operation against discriminatory real estate practices.

  “We got there because of white people who saw that we were getting turned away in town after town every time.”
  —Cory Booker [12:52]

• Reflects on being the first Black family in his town, experiences of police discrimination, and enduring racism in America and politics.

• Discusses political attacks faced in early Newark campaigns; how loss and adversity delivered powerful lessons in empathy and perseverance.

6. Republican Party, Complicity, and Demographic Change (17:40–21:41)

• Fear as the Heart of Political Loyalty: Booker attributes the GOP’s loyalty to Trump to fear—of their base, of re-election loss.

  “There’s a reason why Profiles in Courage is such a thin volume.”
  —Cory Booker [18:28]

• Long-Term GOP Decline: Booker predicts demographic shifts are dooming the Republican Party unless it adapts.

  “You can’t run your party on racism and think you’re going to get Latino, Asian, immigrant, African American voters.”
  —Cory Booker [20:20]

7. Criminal Justice, Wall Street, and Reform (21:41–24:11)

• Justice System’s Double Standard: The disparity between white-collar criminals and poor offenders.

  “You get treated better if you are rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.”
  —Cory Booker [21:46]

• Calls for holding pharmaceutical companies criminally liable for the opioid crisis if warranted.

8. The Trump Family, Kushners & Personal Connections (24:11–30:44)

• Booker reflects on his history with the Kushner family, from campaign donors to negotiating criminal justice reform with Jared Kushner.

  “Again, this is decade plus before what we know now. And I still remember when [Charlie Kushner] got into his legal trouble.... I just will never sanction bad behavior... But I still remember still talking to him in prison and writing letters with him. And when he came out, I credit him with being a guy that was so moved by what he saw criminal justice system...”
  —Cory Booker [26:55]

• Principle Over Partisanship: Booker maintains the importance of engaging with opponents rather than wholesale vilification.

9. Working Across Divides in the Senate (30:44–35:16)

• Cooperation Amidst Disagreement: Describes working with senators he disagrees with to achieve important reforms (e.g., with Trump and Lindsey Graham on criminal justice).

  “So tell that liberated person that Cory Booker should not deal with somebody that he fundamentally disagrees with on more things. That’s the problem in this country.”
  —Cory Booker [33:50]

• Increasing Tribalism: Booker laments a culture that vilifies crossing party lines—citing backlash for hugging John McCain.

10. Criminal Justice: Radical Reform or Abolition? (35:55–40:14)

• Booker supports broad criminal justice reform, including clemency for thousands, treatment for addiction, and learning from international models—but stops short of outright abolition.

  “We radically change the ideas of crime and punishment in this country. That we emulate what works.”
  —Cory Booker [38:07]

• Highlights the scale and racial injustice of U.S. mass incarceration.

11. Health Care Debate: Pragmatism Over Purity (41:05–43:10)

• Booker supports Medicare for All in principle, but presents himself as a pragmatist advocating for immediate steps (public option, reducing drug costs) toward universal coverage.

  “My community doesn’t have time to sacrifice progress on the altar of purity. They need help now.”
  —Cory Booker [42:46]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “For me, this is a moment of constitutional vandalism like I’ve never seen in my lifetime.”
  —Cory Booker [00:10]
• “This is a moment, a moral moment, that we should stand up and say... if the politics don’t line up, you’re not gonna be impeached.”
  —Cory Booker [01:48]
• “Nobody in the Democratic Party who’s ever been polling ahead right now in a presidential race has ever gone on to be president.”
  —Cory Booker [03:37]
• “We didn’t beat Bull Connor because we brought bigger dogs and bigger fire hoses... But we had artists of activism who called to the moral imagination of this country and created, excited and ignited new majorities.”
  —Cory Booker [10:13]
• “You can’t run your party on racism and think you’re going to get Latino, Asian, immigrant, African American voters.”
  —Cory Booker [20:20]
• “You get treated better if you are rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.”
  —Cory Booker [21:46]
• “My community doesn’t have time to sacrifice progress on the altar of purity. They need help now.”
  —Cory Booker [42:46]

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Memorable Moments

• Booker’s Candid Story about Republican T-Shirts: Supporters of rival candidates contributing just to keep him in the race, out of decency [08:45].
• Punch-Line Rebuttal: Booker’s refusal to advocate violence against Trump (“that's a felony”) and his explanation of non-violent strategies [09:00].
• Personal Family Story: Detailed account of how his parents, helped by white allies, overcame housing discrimination in New Jersey [12:52].
• Reflection on Political Courage: A lament that “Profiles in Courage is such a thin volume” due to politicians putting jobs before principle [18:28].

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Flow & Tone

The conversation is direct, thoughtful, and at times deeply personal. Booker interweaves moral arguments with stories from his life and career. The hosts push for specificity on policy and personal experiences, and Booker responds with both idealism and a pragmatic willingness to engage across divides.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening/Constitutional Crisis: 00:10–02:17
• 2020 Campaign & Electability: 03:17–06:50
• Campaign Endurance: 06:50–08:41
• Rejecting Hatred: 09:45–11:14
• Race & Upbringing Stories: 11:14–17:38
• Partisanship & Republican Decline: 17:40–21:41
• Criminal Justice Reform: 21:41–24:11, 35:55–40:14
• Booker and the Kushners: 24:11–30:44
• Senate Cooperation: 30:44–35:16
• Health Care Debate: 41:05–43:10

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This episode provides a multi-dimensional portrait of Cory Booker as a candidate defined by his core values, his life’s narrative, and a hopeful (yet realistic) view of what politics can be, even in divisive times.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.

[Cory Booker]

Let me just put my perspective on this, which is, for me, this is a moment of constitutional vandalism like I've never seen in my lifetime. I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and we have a president that won't submit themselves to the checks and balances of our Constitution. He is undermining the ability for Congress to do its job and investigate. That was the line that crossed for me. I was not immediately calling for impeachment. I was saying, let's investigate after the Mueller report. But Congress hasn't been able to do their job.

[David Remnick]

Last week, on Monday, Senator Cory Booker came to the studio and we talked about many things, but top of our minds was, of course, the prospect of impeachment.

[Cory Booker]

There will be a point in history where people look back on us and say, what did people do when the Constitution was under assault and being violated?

[David Remnick]

Just one day after we spoke, the political world changed completely.

[Nancy Pelosi]

The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.

[David Remnick]

Speaker Pelosi's reluctance up until that point had been frustrating to Booker and to many other Democrats, but her motive was plain and may turn out to be extremely shrewd. Pelosi has felt all along that if the House began impeachment too soon and with too little public support, and it died in the Senate, as it still likely might, then Democratic candidates would suffer badly in the 2020 elections, politics be damned.

[Cory Booker]

This is a moment, a moral moment, that we should stand up and say, are we? Because the precedent that it sets is whoever. Democrat, Republican, future presidents. Yeah. Trash the Constitution and the checks and balances, because if the politics don't line up, you're not gonna be impeached.

[David Remnick]

But politics be damned, even if it.

[Ethan]

Hands an election to Donald Trump, I.

[Cory Booker]

Have more faith in the American people right now.

[Ethan]

Do you?

[Cory Booker]

Absolutely. And they've shown it in the 2018 election. Hell, they showed it in the first weeks of this presidency.

[David Remnick]

In the crowded field vying for the 2020 nomination, Senator Booker is looking still for a breakout moment, and he hasn't gotten it yet. He pledged not to take contributions from corporate PACs or lobbyists, and now his campaign is desperately short of cash. In fact, it could even fold very soon. But Booker is an accomplished candidate on the stump and he's certainly not short on ambition. His agenda includes sweeping criminal justice reform and a $3 trillion climate package. He came up in politics as the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, a city that suffered badly from the loss of manufacturing, from abandonment, poverty, violence, neglect of every kind. As mayor, he succeeded in revitalizing Newark's downtown, and he oversaw a drop in the notoriously high crime rate there. Then there was the time that Cory Booker rushed into a burning house and saved the life of one of his constituents. He seemed to have a knack for making the right move at the right time.

[Ethan]

You are polling now at 2% and you just put out essentially a plea for more funds. Otherwise you're not going to be able to continue your campaign. You were looking for $1.7 million, I believe, by the end of September, which is fast upon us.

[David Remnick]

What's been the problem and what are the prospects?

[Cory Booker]

Well, two things. I want to just talk about polls for a second because we've polled everywhere from 2 to 6%, usually around number six in all the pollers. But the one thing that most folks know, and it's a truth of my life, your life, is that nobody in the Democratic Party who's ever been polling ahead right now in a presidential race has ever gone on to be president. The people we've elected, Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, were all considered long shots, some of them barely registering in the polls, who then went on and upset, usually in Iowa or New Hampshire, and then go on to the nominee. So polls wildly are not what people should be looking at. What we've been building this campaign to do is to win. This wasn't a vanity play. The way you win is by going directly to the grassroots. And we built what everybody from the Des Moines Register to Iowa starting line unequivocally has said the two best teams in Iowa on the ground are Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren. And more than that, in Iowa, New Hampshire. We're leading all candidates in the endorsements of local elected officials. Mayors, state representatives, even state senators. We lead in both states, so we are showing our ability to win. But the one thing is the people who are at the top of the polls right now are the people that walked into this with Bernie and Biden. 100% name recognition.

[David Remnick]

But is the problem ideological?

[Ethan]

In other words? I think the electorate, even modestly engaged, knows that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren represent the so called progressive wing of the party and Joe Biden represents the so called moderate wing of the party. Where are you in that and are you projecting it in a clear enough way?

[Cory Booker]

So I just resist that orientation because of people I talk to. I know that that's the way Washington we think and a lot of the pundits think. But you talk to people on the ground. In fact, you can see this data wise, look at who's supporting Elizabeth Warren right now. You see people coming from Biden, you see people coming from Bernie. I think what people really want is someone they believe can beat Donald Trump. And, and what I'm finding the reason why I think we're doing so well in Iowa with commitment to caucus cards, endorsements, is because people want somebody that can excite the whole electorate, that can energize and heal this country. That's not just about who's got a better 15 point policy plan. For me, this is about a revival of civic grace. How do we have a more courageous empathy in our country? How do we create a context for new American majorities, not in a partisan sense, but in the history that I love in our nation that's allowed us to advance on to beat Jim Crow when Sputnik was up to go to the moon first. These weren't partisan majorities that did these things. These were people that had a moral imagination that were able to excite that in our country where we all joined together in common cause. So I just think that the theme of this election is not fight fire with fire. I ran a fire department in Newark. That's not a good way to put out fire, but it really comes to the core of King. One of my favorite quotes from King, which is what we have to repent for in this day and age is not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. This presidential election is not a referendum on one guy in one office. It is a referendum on who we are as a people and who we are to each other.

[Ethan]

I've got to ask you a question about a book. Richard Ben Cramer. Long ago, the late Richard Ben Kramer wrote a book about a presidential campaign that on the surface did not seem to be the most exciting campaign of all time. And it's called what It Takes. And the strength of that book is that through profiles of all the candidates and really deep reporting, you got a sense of what it really takes to run for president in terms of endurance, in terms almost the physicality of running, the granular details of running for president. What has surprised you and what can you tell us about that human experience of Running for president, even in these.

[Cory Booker]

Early months, well, it is a physical endurance test and it does reveal who you are and how you deal and what kind of campaign that you run. My political training, there's an Oscar nominated documentary about it called Street Fight. My political training comes from the roughest of rough campaigns where you tires on my car slashed, windows smashed, my phone tapped.

[Ethan]

But you were greeted as an outsider by the kind of political machine in.

[Cory Booker]

Newark, underdog, I mean, everything imaginable against us, national political people coming to campaign against us. So this, to me, it reminded me.

[Ethan]

Of Barack Obama's attempt to beat Bobby Rush in Chicago.

[Cory Booker]

It is so similar. I hope people watch the movie because it is. You just won't think it's America, the kind of stuff we had to go up against. And it is such a great way to learn that it has to be retail, grassroots. And so much of this in those early primary states is about that people want to kick your tires, they want to.

[Ethan]

Anybody slashing them. No, but what's the experience? Obviously you're not getting your tires slashed, but what is surprising you about the experience of running for president?

[Cory Booker]

The goodness of people.

[Ethan]

You get the opposite.

[Cory Booker]

God, I don't. In fact, other camp, when I was walking through the Iowa steak fry as a vegan and we put out there that we were not gonna stay in the campaign if we couldn't raise money, I had people in other T shirts, other candidates T shirts saying, oh, I'm an ex person supporter, but need you in this race, man, I gave you five bucks. And there is a decency and a goodness. And even my campaign team, we got together and said, cory, you know the sentiment of folks is they don't wanna beat Donald Trump. They would like to eliminate him from the planet earth. And you're gonna start this campaign talking about more courageous empathy, a revival of civic grace. I still remember one of my favorite moments in the campaign is I'm going to Iowa, to a big town hall. We're blown away by how many people showed up. And a big guy sees me, I'm a big guy, former tight end for Stanford, and puts his arm around me, thinks he's gonna have sort of a bro moment and says, dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face. And I look at him and I go, dude, that's a felony. And just said, sit down, Let me explain to you why that's the exact wrong approach to beating Donald Trump. And I made the case, like I do in every town hall, that I know I'm angry, I'M hurt. And if you look around America right now, if America's not breaking your heart, you don't love her enough. But let me make the case to you that the way we've beat demagogues and bullies and fear mongers is how.

[Ethan]

Michelle Obama tells us, when they go low, we go high. And that was tried in 2016, and maybe that didn't work out so well. So where are you on that?

[Cory Booker]

Well, let me just make you two historical points to you. The first one is about what sentiment wins McCarthyism to Governor Wallace's bigotry and hate and fear mongering. We didn't beat Bull Connor because we brought bigger dogs and bigger fire hoses. We didn't beat him because we demeaned and degraded him personally. But we had artists.

[Ethan]

Is Donald Trump Bull Connor?

[Cory Booker]

I mean, his brand of white supremacy, his brand of bigotry and racism that he's preaching from the highest office in the land. He sounds more like George Wallace than he does George Washington. But remember, we beat Bull Connor by artists of activism who called to the moral imagination of this country and created, excited and ignited new majorities. And so you can go from how did we beat the fear mongering of McCarthyism? We don't beat it by playing on their turf, on their terms, using their tactics. This president will not be beaten by us out nicknaming him or by demeaning and degrading. That's playing into the darkness that he's trying to drag this country in.

[Ethan]

You grew up in Jersey about 10 minutes from where I did. And your town you grew up in was almost completely white, if I remember it well, pretty damn white. And you come from a family of first black executives at IBM. How did your parents talk to you about race in those particular circumstances at that particular time? And then how do you think about it today, what they were telling you, you must have been gravely, gravely disappointed by 2016, to put it unbelievably mildly.

[Cory Booker]

Look, my parents were not in any way hesitant at telling my brother and I about the wretchedness and bigotry and hate in this country. When I was about to get my driver's license. I remember my parents having a conversation with me that I thought was I made my normal wry teenage jokes and the seriousness in their eyes and the fear in their eyes helping me understand that I would have a different experience as. And it turned out they were predicted, right, with police officers than my high school friends.

[Ethan]

But this is the thing that predicted, right? What was your experience?

[Cory Booker]

Oh, my God. I couldn't come over with the George Washington bridge in the 80s without being pulled over. I mean, this was the days that people used to go over to Washington Heights, buy drugs, come right you and I came up in the same area, come right back over. Black guy alone in a car pulled over all the times. Palisades Parkway, cars surrounded. I can tell horrible indignant stories. Or just walking into Jersey malls and being fought, followed. You're not a young black man in the era of Willie Horton and all the fear mongering about super predators. You just couldn't be a young. My 20s have painful stories, but this is what my parents told me. They said what defines us not just as a family, but as a country is not that there's bigotry, hatred and racism, there's always been. But how we respond to them. You talk about me being the first black family in an all white town, as my father affectionately called us. The four raisins and a tub of sweet vanilla ice cream. We got there because of white people who saw that we were getting turned away in town after town every time. My parents in 1969 tried to buy.

[Ethan]

A home in Bergen County, New Jersey.

[Cory Booker]

In Bergen County, New Jersey. And so what happened? They found a group of mostly white people, some blacks, who met in a living room on the weekends and decided to do a sting operation and sent my parents out with a volunteer white couple behind them. When my parents were told the house was sold or pulled off the market, the white couple found out the house was still for sale. In the house I grew up in, the white couple put a bid on the house bid accepted papers drawn up on the day of the closing. The white couple did not show up in the real estate agent's office. My father did. And a volunteer lawyer named Marty Friedman, white guy, Jewish. And they march into the real estate agent's office. And by the way, the real estate agent didn't capitulate. He stands up and punches Marty Friedman in the face and sings a dog on my dad.

[Ethan]

We got this is not Montgomery in 1950, this is new Jersey.

[Cory Booker]

My parents fought violence and racism to grow up in my house. My parents told me that story, but they also told me the story about the good people who understood that patriotism is love of country. But you can't love your country unless you love your fellow countrymen and women. And love isn't sentimentality. Love is sacrifice and it's service. It's saying that if your kids don't have a great public school to go to, my kids are Lesser off.

[Ethan]

This is a very hard question to ask, but again, it goes to the Obama experience in Chicago. When he first ran for Congress, he was running against Bobby Rush, who was a fixture of the south side. He's still in Congress. Obama came from Hawaii. He was living on the south side, had been an organizer, a state senator. And he comes into Bobby Rush's district and he is told repeatedly that he is, and it's a horrible phrase, not black enough, over and over and over again. And he lost by a big margin. You had the same thing happen when you came to Newark first time around. You got beat like a drum.

[Cory Booker]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[Ethan]

By people in town.

[Cory Booker]

No, no, no, no, please. The evolution is much different than that.

[Ethan]

Go ahead.

[Cory Booker]

Came in as a tenant organizer, worked with tenant leaders all over the city, who then said to me, run for office. And I said no. And I got into not a fight because these were elders in my community. But I finally said, okay, I will be your candidate. We ran in the Central Ward of Newark where there's the most public housing, the most dense poverty, for a city council seat at a time that in general city council people didn't leave office unless it was death or conviction. And we was running against a guy 40 years older than me in an impossible election. And we won in the majority black ward in the lowest district. So I served four years on the city council before I took on Sharpe James. And that's when the rhetoric you're talking.

[Ethan]

About, believe me, I understand. But why did the rhetoric kick in so bad? And it wasn't just Sharpe James saying it. There were people all over the city that were. I remember it well. Really hard on you.

[Cory Booker]

Yeah.

[Ethan]

In a city where, in my growing up, if I remember correctly, every mayor of Newark went to jail until you.

[Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Ethan]

Hugh Ad Nezio, Ken Gibson, eventually. Sharp chance.

[Cory Booker]

Leo Carlin, going back even further.

[Ethan]

Exactly.

[Cory Booker]

Look, the reality is we had a hard fought, close election and our opponent used every possible imaginable tool. I mean, you remember on ABC TV saying, this guy is a tool of the Jews. I mean, just remarks that we found stunning. He's like using comments that were so objectionable. KKK member. Oh, the CIA planted him in our city. But come on, we are American politics as we know the paranoid style that has been written about Richard Hofstadt. Yeah, exactly. So we know that that is a lever that many politicians have tried to use, including the President of the United States right now, to try to divide people against their opponents to make you afraid. I've already Mentioned Willie Horton. And you can go through all the people that used appeals to racial solidarity or appeals to fear, insecurity. And I've gone through it all. And in many ways, the best lessons I've gotten in my political career came from losing two sharp chains.

[Ethan]

First time around.

[Cory Booker]

Yes, first time around.

[Ethan]

You also work in the Senate every single day and have for a while, and your Republican colleagues have almost, to a man and a woman, stayed extremely loyal to not only Trump, but to Trumpism, not only to the President of the United States, but the way he behaves or quashes subpoenas or his rhetoric and all of it. What does that tell you? That the number of senators, or Republicans in general who have actually broken from the president really add up to a number of retirees.

[Cory Booker]

Yeah. Corker Flake. Sadly, McCain. I want to.

[Ethan]

I mean, but what does that tell you about that? What is going on?

[Cory Booker]

Fear. Fear.

[Ethan]

Fear of what? Fear of their own jobs.

[Cory Booker]

Well, there was a.

[Ethan]

Is the job that great?

[Cory Booker]

Well, I won't call. Yeah, well, look, look, I say life is about purpose, not position. And when you lose that perspective and it becomes about position and not purpose, that corruption is at the soul level, and you should be willing to give up your position to stay true to your purpose. And that's what frustrates me right now. There's a reason why Profiles and Courage is such a thin volume. It's because I'll hear people talk to me in hallways, in private settings about how, like I'll give you an example, just a very pragmatic example. We in the Senate passed a bipartisan spending bill, and then Trump comes in and says no, and he says, this is not the right thing to do, and shuts the government down. That was one of the few days I heard people saying, how could he do this? There was an empathy for lots of different issues that would be affected by this. But there is a fear.

[Ethan]

I'm sorry, but a fear of what?

[Cory Booker]

The same fear that had people who, after the Access Hollywood tape, withdrew their endorsement, and then when they saw how people turned on them, they put the endorsement back. You can't say that that's about anything other than your fear of your reelection, that you saw what was happening, morally objectionable, and you removed your endorsement, and now you've changed your mind and put your endorsement back because you're afraid of losing your office. That's my problem right now. What does it benefit a man to gain the world and lose their soul? And that's my faith speaking. And I. I fully think we are in that moment.

[Ethan]

And I think, is Mitch McConnell losing his soul?

[Cory Booker]

Look, I think that this is what they might lose. I think this could be the moment where you see the destruction of the Republican Party as a national party, that this could be the Rubicon with which there's no going back.

[Ethan]

What shape does that take?

[Cory Booker]

It takes, number one. Young people now are abandoning the Republican Party at rates that are astonishing, to become independents or Democrats in pretty dramatic ways. The demographic shifts. You can't run your party on racism and think you're going to get Latino, Asian, immigrant, African American voters. The future of this country is a diverse, much more diverse future than the Republican Party base. I can't remember the overwhelming majority of Republican House members. Look at it when you see the House split as white men, they're not even doing well with women. And by the way, you see women more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate. A state like Texas on the verge of flipping permanently blue for presidential elections, not to mention Georgia, North Carolina, and I can go through other elections. The way they're conducting this party is contrary to what I think it was 2013 in their autopsy, which they said, the only way we're going to stay a relevant party is to deal with the issues that the majority believes in. The majority is with us on climate change in the Democratic Party, raising the minimum wage, common sense, gun safety. I can go through the things that they constantly are putting themselves on the wrong side of the people on, because their narrow band of electorate and their corporate power brokers, corporate gun lobby and others are dictating to a party and are pushing them into a corner in which they will become irrelevant on national elections in the future.

[Ethan]

Do you think that more people should have gone to prison for their role in what we now call the Great Recession?

[Cory Booker]

Absolutely. Look, we have a national criminal justice system, whereas Bryan Stevenson says you get treated better if you are rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. And as a guy, again, that lives in a community where I see people going to jail for doing things that two of the last three presidents have admitted to doing. Remember George Bush and Barack Obama? It wasn't just some pot. Both of them did some pretty serious drugs. And yet lives in my community are destroyed. There's no difference between blacks and whites for using drugs or who should have.

[Ethan]

Gone to jail from Wall Street.

[Cory Booker]

Well, look, I'm not about to do what I think Donald Trump does mistakenly and tries to think that he's not only the executive, but he's the judicial branch as well. There's something called due process. But let's be clear. There was fraud, massive fraud going on. Insurance companies rating trash as treasure. I watched my community being taken advantage of a mortgage industry. That was immoral. You remember these NINJA loans? They were luring people into homes, giving them cash on signing. You get thousands of dollars just for signing the papers.

[Ethan]

No, of course. But the Obama Justice Department, no matter what you think of Barack Obama, did not prioritize coming after those.

[Cory Booker]

And I'm telling you, if I'm president of the United States, the pharma industry, we should hold people criminally liable for perpetuating this opioid crisis like the Sackler family. If you are purposefully violating laws to fuel what is lowering the life expectancy of Americans, Yeah, there should be criminal investigations. And I find our. And this is something, you know, this from the beginning of my career, talking about the justice system and how dramatically biased it is, where we have a different standard for different people. And when my community, not just Newark, when the larger African American, more marijuana arrests in 2017 than violent crime arrests. And so for the Department of Justice to somehow have a different standard for white collar crime, when I see people going to jail for theft at a smaller levels, out of desperation, by the way, I find that unacceptable. So one of my main missions of life, whatever position I hold, is to make when we pledge allegiance and say liberty and justice for all, that we actually have a criminal justice system that reflects that.

[Ethan]

You've talked about how history will look back on the Trump administration, and I wonder how history will look back on the Trump administration and the Trump family, particularly the Trump family, in legal terms. We constantly hear about that there's a grift going on essentially, that Donald Trump and his family and confederates are profiting, making business of being in the White House. Do you see that?

[Cory Booker]

Yes. And I wonder what the monuments clause is all about. But we're seeing it coming out now about everything from foreign dignitaries understanding that, hey, we need to pay the president's business enterprises, stay in their hotels, resorts, resorts, et cetera. We see government expenditures being used in making side trips to Scotland, so to speak. All of this stuff is not just despicable, but it's also, I think, a violation of our. Of our loss.

[Ethan]

You've known the Kushner family for an awfully long time.

[Cory Booker]

How has your 20 years, how has.

[Ethan]

Your view of that family evolved?

[Cory Booker]

Look, this is deeper in many ways than that for me, and it is a test in many ways for the principles with which I live my life. So when I needed to pass criminal justice reform and was negotiating to get that bill done, I'm proud to have led that in the United States Senate. On the Democratic side, I still remember the battle to get the last thing I was trying to force into this bill, which was a ban on solitary confinement for juveniles. I was negotiating with Jared Kushner, who I've known since I think he was 11, 12, 13 years old.

[Ethan]

And just so the listeners know, the Kushner family has a real estate business not far from Newark.

[Cory Booker]

No. But I think the better.

[David Remnick]

And now they're more in Manhattan.

[Cory Booker]

I think the better thing to know is that this was one of the biggest Democratic Party fundraisers. Fundraisers.

[Ethan]

They were fixtures and gave money to.

[Cory Booker]

Your campaigns, Gave money to every major Democrat in America. They were number one on the DNC list. That's just a significant Democratic Party set of people. But my experience with them was very different when the whole state establishment was going in a different direction. I had a meeting Years ago, years, 2001 maybe, with Charlie Kushner, and he said, jared's father. Jared's father. And he just said, I hear a lot about this guy. Tell me who you are. And he must have sat there and listened to me for 20, 30 minutes. And the more I talked, though, the more I thought, this meeting's going wrong.

[Ethan]

It was going wrong in what sense?

[Cory Booker]

Because he looked so angry as I was talking to him.

[Ethan]

Just in general.

[Cory Booker]

Yeah. And then at the end of the meeting, he just looks now like he's done with me. And he pushes some button or makes some call to his assistant and says, send in my business partners. And they sat down, and he goes to them, we are about to make a really bad business decision. But this guy is a righteous man, and the guy he's running against is a blankety blank blank. And he goes, I'm going to support you, and I want you to tell people I am. And it did hurt him because Sharpe James blocked his appointment to the Port Authority and a lot of other things. Again, this is decade plus before what we know now. And I still remember when he got into his legal trouble. When you are in trouble in life and you've done things wrong, I just will never sanction bad behavior. And I will speak up against it. I don't care who you are. But I still remember still talking to him in prison and writing letters with him. And when he came out, I credit him with being a guy that was so moved by what he saw criminal justice system, that we went together to this Is again, way before you saw.

[Ethan]

Salvation in them, in a sense.

[Cory Booker]

He took me to Rikers Island.

[Ethan]

We talking about Charlie Kushner or Jared Kushner?

[Cory Booker]

Jared's a kid, frankly.

[Ethan]

Okay.

[Cory Booker]

Takes me to Rikers island, and first time I'm a Jersey guy and I meet with young black men to talk to them. And I still remember going around how long you've been here? Six months, a year? More. Not even had your trial yet. And I was so angry when I walked out of there that it fueled me even more in my quest to end this mass incarceration and to see the torture, because those kids, in fact, there's a very famous story of one of them who committed suicide when he got out, was in solitary confinement almost for two years for stealing a backpack. And then eventually the charges were dismissed.

[Ethan]

It's Kalief Browder. It was written about in the New Yorker by Jen Gonneman. Yeah.

[Cory Booker]

Yes. And so Kalief's story of the psychological harm that's done when you're in solitary confinement, and to be there and witness that with other young black and brown people, I'll never forget that trip to Rikers that made me more determined to end this nightmare. And the irony of that is I was sitting with kids that were in school and flash forward to now, the Kushners becoming Republicans. You know, the family's marrying with the Trump family. And fast forward all the way to me arguing with Jared Kushner about ending that practice that I saw with his father, solitary confinement. And by the way, did that feel.

[Ethan]

Weird to you that you're negotiating with Jared Kushner, the son in law?

[Cory Booker]

So at the end of the day, I'm a person of faith and practicality. No, There's a Jewish phrase, gamsela tova, in everything, there is some purpose. Yes. Some good. And so I don't question where God puts me sometimes, but I know I'm there for a purpose. And I don't know about this. Like, this is the stuff of a novel to have me now, the rivals, so to speak, in everything I'm trying to stop in the Trump administration. But I will never like human dignity and vilification of individuals, wholesale, like Lindsey Graham and me like God. I could write a dissertation on my disagreements with Lindsey Graham, but when it came to that, negotiating that criminal justice bill, he was on my side. I still remember him saying to the White House, give Cory Booker whatever he wants, because you can't get this bill done without him. And so we are in this moment in American history where we are I'm hurting and I'm angry, angry. But I will not fall into the trap. As my parents taught me, as my mom in Sunday school taught me, never let somebody pull you so low as to hate them.

[Ethan]

This is interesting. You were really rough on Joe Biden, totally understandably. About his relationship or the way he described his relationship with some segregation senses.

[Cory Booker]

No, no, no, it's more than that.

[Ethan]

Always thought he could, you know, you could find some common ground and all the rest. You were really rough on him, but.

[Cory Booker]

That wasn't the reason.

[Ethan]

Go ahead.

[Cory Booker]

Because I think it's just that that's a. Some misreporting.

[Ethan]

What I'm saying is how do you deal with people that are colleagues of yours in the Senate who may not be Jim Crow is not available to them, but you think of them not.

[David Remnick]

In the back of your mind, in.

[Ethan]

The front of your mind as stone cold racist. And do you deal with them or you don't?

[Cory Booker]

So the Biden construction. As a guy who has said publicly every major crime bill from the 70s till now, major and minor, that passed through the Congress had my name on it. Now picture me in 1994 when the crime bill was done. I'm a young black man in my.

[Ethan]

20S, although a lot of black politicians and intellectuals were for those crime bills, however misbegotten they were.

[Cory Booker]

I'm not saying anything but my experience growing up, up in America, we talked about it already. I had a very different experience as a 20 something black man in this country at a time that there was all of these people stoking fear and witnessed the mass incarceration that was going on of black men at the same time, including the Clintons at the same time. I'm at Yale watching people do drugs, sell drugs. There's just as percentage wise, just as many black and white drug dealers.

[Ethan]

With impunity.

[Cory Booker]

With impunity. You know, I always say that the problem often with our experiences is a problem is not a problem until it happens to us. And that's a problem with empathy. That's, I think, one of the reasons with gun violence, which we can talk about, but I'm sorry, I didn't care, Democrat or Republican, I felt the party and the country was portraying the truth, that we thought we could just throw people away, destroy lives. And remember, the war on drugs wasn't just a war on black people. It was a war on certain communities where you now have one out of every two black men that were taken away from their families, that now when they come out, it's a Life sentence. You can't get a business license, can't work at a fast food restaurant because you have a nonviolent drug conviction. And so, yeah, I feel some kind of way about people that participate in that. But you know what? As a guy who lives the ideals of redemption, I was upset that Joe Biden would not come forward and say I was wrong and just speak to the people.

[Ethan]

I understand that, but how do you work now with people in the Senate who, in some form or another, you consider modern segregation?

[Cory Booker]

Yeah, you.

[Ethan]

What do you not.

[Cory Booker]

No, you have to work with people who you fundamentally disagree with, but it's.

[Ethan]

More visible than just. You're not disagreeing with them on the margins of a tax policy debate. You're. You are fundamentally, morally, viscerally.

[Cory Booker]

Donald Trump signed opposition to them, signed my bill. I worked with him and his White House to pass a bill that liberated thousands of black people from prison. When we took the crack cocaine, powder cocaine disparity that they moved from 100 to 1 to 18 to run, which is still offensive and in my opinion, racist, they didn't make it retroactive. The bill we got done made it retroactive. Liberated thousands of people. 90% of them were black. So tell that liberated person that Cory Booker should not deal with somebody that he fundamentally disagrees with on more things. That's the problem in this country. Because, look, Chris Christie, who I disagree with on a lot of things, he's not a racist in any way, but he's a friend. And I disagree with him passionately. But he was the governor of the state. I had to find. We had to find common ground. He told me the story about how he lost 10 points in New Hampshire when he was running for president. Not any policy issue. Super PACs against him. Kept running a commercial of him hugging Barack Obama after the flood. But think about this for a second. We're at a point in our country, we're hugging another human being, just touching somebody that's not in your tribe. We vilify each other so much. I felt this in a lesser way when I hug John McCain on the Senate floor. And the backlash on Twitter from people in my party for hugging a, quote, unquote, baby killer was what some of the comments, outrageous comments were.

[Ethan]

How often do you look at Twitter?

[Cory Booker]

I mean, now I don't. Honestly, I look at the tweets. I used to live on it. It was a platform with which I used constructively to help my city.

[Ethan]

What drove you away? Was there a morning that you went on and you saw something that Just said, you know what? I think I'm not gonna swim in these waters anymore.

[Cory Booker]

I think energy is so important, and my own energy was sapped by it, was just drained by it. I think it's the challenge with people who are in law enforcement and others if you're. You need to do something to protect your spirit and your soul.

[Ethan]

Let me ask you another criminal justice question. There's now a movement afoot, admittedly not hardly a majority movement, even in the Democratic Party, called the abolitionist movement, which is essentially, if not to clean out all jails and prisons, completely close to it. The idea that the whole history of discipline and punish and imprisonment is misbegotten. Where do you stand on that?

[Cory Booker]

Well, first of all, if you look at other successful models of incarceration around the globe, we are way out of step with our peers, industrials by leaps and bounds. What we do here is inhumane. Shackling pregnant women when they're giving pregnant children in solitary confinement, which we may have gotten effectively going on the federal level, but it still goes on on the state level. So look, this whole field, the whole Democratic primary field is not going far enough for me. We identified 17,000 people who are in federal prisons right now who do not belong factually, if you just look at the case. And so let me give you an example who some of these people are. There are aspects of the criminal justice reform bill that we passed that 87 senators said that this sentence is way too long, and they adjusted those sentences down. And now you have the outrageous injustice of people with the same crime who have dramatically 5, 10, 15 years life sentence, years further in a prison than somebody who committed the same crime. We should make those sentencing changes retroactive and give those people pathways to out of prison. So I'm very far in this field about what we should be doing.

[Ethan]

I know, but those are. But with respect, liberal or reformist views of what we're talking about, I'm asking a more radical question about the abolition.

[Cory Booker]

17,000 people getting clemency is not radical. Out of the.

[David Remnick]

Out of millions.

[Cory Booker]

No, no, no. The federal prison population is not millions.

[Ethan]

Okay? But we have, overall, in the state system, et cetera, we have millions of people who are incarcerated in this country. And a crazily outsized proportion of them, of course, are black and brown and.

[Cory Booker]

Poor and poor and mentally ill. We over incarcerate the mentally ill. We over incarcerate the addicted. We over incarcerate women.

[Ethan]

What do we do about this?

[Cory Booker]

We radically change the ideas of crime and punishment in this country. That we emulate what works.

[Ethan]

Is there a foreign model that you see as attractive for United States?

[Cory Booker]

There's a guy I knew from law school, Nick Turner, who runs an organization here in New York called the Vera Institute, who takes tours of prisons in other countries and has actually gotten people here in this country wardens to go look at other models and come back and change the way they're doing things. So there are a number of models that I hope that I'll be one of these presidents that when I go to on state visits, that visits prisons. Part of my faith too. Did you visit me in prison to draw attention to the better ways of doing this? Because our society, while our infrastructure was crumbling between the time I was in law school to the time I was mayor of the city of Newark, we were building a new jail or prison every 10 days. There are more people in the south that are in prisons and jails than in college campuses. We now have more African Americans in this country under criminal supervision than all the slaves in 1850. We have created a destructive criminal justice system that's costing us more. In fact, Villanova University did a, an amazing, compelling study where they said we would have 20% less poverty in America if our incarceration rates were the same as our industrial peers. So most Americans do not understand the self inflicted harm it does. And you shouldn't have to wait until you go to prison or some family members to see how injustice is. Again, going back to the Charlie Korschna story, empathy should not be created only when something happens to you. We should have a more courageous empathy in the country to understand that right now, as you and I are having this conversation, there are children in solitary confinement. There are people who are addicted, in desperate need of treatment, who are stuck in prisons and jails. There are veterans disproportionately represented in our jails and prisons who need mental health care. I can go through the shameful things going on in our society that should prick all of our consciousness to make us all activists to end the nightmare of what is American mass incarceration.

[Ethan]

Senator, finally, the issue that seems to be the most divisive up on the debate stage anyway is not the environment where people are competing a little bit to see how much, how strongly they can get behind this issue in terms of spending, in terms of imagination and all the rest. But on medical care, yes. And you have, certainly you have Bernie Sanders, who, as he tells us, wrote the damn bill and Medicare for all is the rubric under which his position comes. And to almost to the same degree Elizabeth Warren. And then you have Joe Biden over here saying, basically what we need is Obamacare plus Obamacare improved. I'm a little unclear again. I don't want to make this too simplistic, but I'm a little unclear on where you are in those polarities.

[Cory Booker]

But it is simplistic the way people are trying to break down. And I've tried to say that from the debate stage twice. So let me just first say since I was a mayor, this is the wonderful thing about Twitter is now I have memorialized my staff, showed me tweets I was going at back then as a guy on the ground looking at this jaggedly broken system when I was saying we should have a single payer system. It's just, this is so broken. We're spending so much more money. We're incentivizing all the wrong behaviors. I have people getting primary care in emergency rooms all the time. All the time. Broken system, dumb other countries doing it, getting better outcomes for far less money than we are now. Let me just put on the hat of reality. Everybody on the debate stage believes we should have universal insurance coverage. In fact, I might be able to go as far as saying that everybody on that debate stage thinks that health care should be a right to all Americans.

[David Remnick]

But the question is how you get there.

[Cory Booker]

That's exactly right. Okay. So my belief that the best way to get there is Medicare for all. But I'm also one guy that will tell you right now that we're not gonna get there right away, that it's going to be a process. I think the best process is first and foremost doing common sense stuff to drive down prescription drug costs, to drive down the costs baked in this system. But providing a vibrant public option first will help people. I think as a first step to understand that we could deal with the hospital reimbursement rates that people are afraid of right now. If we do to Bernie's plan, hospitals will collapse. We can begin to show that private insurers have a 15% overhead. Medicare has a less than 2% overhead. So I just am a pragmatist. And as a guy that sees in my community people rationing their insulin, dealing with, as black communities do, disproportionately difficult healthcare rates. My community doesn't have time to sacrifice progress on the altar of purity. They need help now. They need progress now. They need affordable inhalers now. If I'm president of the United States, as a guy who was a mayor, I'm a fierce pragmatist. Every day of my presidency, I will expand health insurance coverage, get us closer and closer to the goal where health care in this country is a right and a reality for everybody.

[David Remnick]

Senator Cory Booker, thank you.

[Cory Booker]

Thank you very much.

[Ethan]

Good luck to you.

[Cory Booker]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

Cory Booker is a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2020, and he's currently the junior senator from the state of New Jersey. We spoke last week. I'm David Remnick. And that's it for today. Thanks for being with us. And if you've enjoyed the show, I just want to remind you you can subscribe to the podcast and catch up on anything you missed. See you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of 2, with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Kalalea, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell and Steven Valentino, with help from Meng Fei Chen and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported.

[Cory Booker]

In part by the Cherina Endowment Fund, Sam.