Booker torches Trump and Netanyahu: ‘Bibi and Donald Trump are liars’

0:01 Booker of New Jersey.

0:02 He serves on the foreign relations and judiciary committees.

0:05 Senator Booker, thank you for being here.

0:07 I just, um, this piece in The Atlantic from Sunday really, for me,

0:12 encapsulates what I've been feeling and thinking because I don't think we're

0:16 going to go back to the status quo whenever this war ends.

0:20 And I also don't think it's ending anytime soon.

0:22 This is what was in The Atlantic.

0:23 I'll read from it.

0:25 Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran

0:27 will be of an entirely different character.

0:29 It can neither be repaired nor ignored.

0:31 There will be no return to the status quo.

0:34 Ante, no ultimate American triumph will undo or overcome the harm done.

0:39 The Strait of Hormuz will not be open

0:41 as it once was with control of the straight,

0:43 Iran emerges as the key player in the region

0:45 and one of the key players in the world.

0:47 There are also other stories over the last couple of days about

0:50 how the farmers are being hard hit because fertilizer is so expensive.

0:53 This war is really shaking the world to its core,

0:56 but the American people as well.

0:59 And it's just we're just not going to go back to normal, whatever normal was.

1:03 Well, I hear it all over our country and especially internationally.

1:05 Donald Trump is an international embarrassment.

1:07 Any America could ask ourselves,

1:09 am I better off than I was before this war started?

1:13 No, we are worse off.

1:14 You said it yourself, the Strait of Hormuz is now blocked.

1:17 We now have a more extreme regime.

1:19 You still have highly enriched fissile material in that country.

1:22 But the American people, where are we?

1:24 Well, we're out about $50 billion in tax money we spent there,

1:28 14 soldiers' lives, hundreds of injured,

1:30 and every single American is feeling the pain at the pump to the tune

1:34 of we're paying billions of dollars more for energy and consumer goods.

1:38 This has been a disaster.

1:39 And now think about this, the strongest nation on the planet

1:41 earth is in a stalemate right now with Iran.

1:45 I mean, that alone should be embarrassing to this president,

1:48 the guy that said he's going to beat them into submission,

1:51 that they were going to have a unilateral, unconditional surrender.

1:54 Well, none of that has happened,

1:55 and he is going back and forth trying to engage in a negotiation

1:57 to end this national nightmare that is

2:00 causing so much pain to the American people.

2:02 And that is in part because they did not

2:03 go in articulating what victory would actually look like.

2:06 You had Prime Minister Netanyahu on CBS's Face the Nation

2:10 and this is how he defined the moment we find ourselves in.

2:15 Is the war with Iran over and if it isn't who will decide when it is.

2:21 I think it accomplished a great deal

2:23 but it's not over because there's still nuclear material.

2:28 I THINK IT CAN BE DONE PHYSICALLY, THAT'S NOT THE PROBLEM.

2:35 IF YOU HAVE AN AGREEMENT AND YOU GO IN AND TAKE IT OUT.

2:38 Why not?

2:39 Is it your sense that nuclear material is,

2:42 in fact, the red line in this negotiation?

2:45 So I want every American to know that B .B.

2:47 and Donald Trump are liars, and this is why.

2:51 They are lying in the most insidious aims.

2:55 The reason why there is still, in-country,

2:58 highly enriched nuclear material is because Bibi and Donald Trump,

3:03 who were against the Obama nuclear deal, ripped it up.

3:05 There was no highly enriched,

3:07 these hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium before Donald

3:10 Trump and Bibi decided to take us down this disastrous road.

3:13 So yeah, there is still highly enriched material

3:16 that's because of them as in that country, because before that we had a deal,

3:20 not just with them, but our European allies, China and Russia,

3:23 to not allow them to get that nuclear material.

3:27 So he caused this problem, he's like an arsonist that caused the problem.

3:30 and then says, well, trust me to actually get us out of it, which he hasn't.

3:34 Not only is the nuclear material there, but we as Americans are far worse off.

3:38 These are two of the most disastrous leaders

3:41 on the world stage that have made Israel,

3:43 the whole region and the United States less safe, not more.

3:46 You know, you have all of that happening

3:49 on an international front and the big concerns

3:53 about what the landscape in the Middle East

3:56 is going TO LOOK LIKE WHEN THIS FINALLY SETTLES,

3:59 AND THERE'S SOME UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT PEACE LOOKS LIKE GOING FORWARD.

4:05 WE'VE SEEN THE DIRECT IMPACT THAT IT'S HAVING ON OUR ECONOMY WHEN the president

4:10 has no plan and from day to day in any moment can say something

4:14 that will royal the market markets or completely move them in a direction where

4:20 rich people get richer and the poor carry the weight of higher gas prices.

4:24 And then you have also, with an election confronting us coming up down the road,

4:30 you've got a number of domestic issues that are

4:32 beginning to boil beneath the surface as well, with Republicans' behaving badly.

4:37 A lot of your colleagues supporting, I think,

4:41 anti-democratic and certainly measures that are antithetical

4:45 to what we once valued as a party,

4:48 a party of civil rights, a party of freedom that the Constitution gives us.

4:55 So now you have━they have built a Supreme Court that is pretty much

4:59 giving them every damn thing they want And just before you sat down,

5:04 sir The Supreme Court has yet again done that By basically telling Alabama

5:09 Y'all can draw a map To take seats away from black people A majority

5:15 of justices siding with the Alabama to move to speed up those efforts

5:20 that Alabama legislation wanted to put in place to redraw the lines there.

5:26 How, sir, do we address this part of it?

5:31 Because we can get lost and down a lot of rabbit holes on a lot of other things.

5:35 But fundamentally, we're looking at the deconstruction of democracy

5:39 and the access to it for citizens every day,

5:42 with this new redistricting effort that Republicans are putting into place.

5:46 A Supreme Court is━that is giving

5:49 justification and verification for those efforts.

5:52 As a U .S.

5:53 senator, sitting there with the power to control the purse strings,

5:58 to control and oversight, how How do you see this moment?

6:04 Well, the Supreme Court has gotten it wrong generation after generation.

6:09 The rights we enjoy right now are not

6:11 because of nine people on the Supreme Court.

6:14 It's because people fought for them.

6:15 And where the Supreme Court usually gets

6:17 it wrong is when they're taking away rights,

6:19 whether it's Korematsu with the internment of Japanese,

6:22 whether it's Plessy versus Ferguson denying

6:25 rights to African-Americans, whether it's Dobbs,

6:27 they got it wrong, taking away rights

6:29 for women to control what happens to their bodies.

6:32 And here we have again the Supreme Court taking away rights,

6:38 equality, fair representation and fair voting,

6:42 doing in result the exact same thing

6:45 happened when Reconstruction fell in the 1870s.

6:49 And exactly what happened then is state legislators moved to take

6:55 away rights and access and fairness and representation from Black people.

7:01 The Supreme Court is effectively sending us back to an era where

7:05 legislators in many of these states can effectively wipe black voter power off.

7:09 This is not about left or right.

7:10 So the real question is, is not what the Supreme Court did,

7:14 because they've done it in past generations.

7:16 It's what are we going to do as a result?

7:18 And they may have issued a decision it's time

7:21 for us to again make history and we can't every

7:25 american should see this as no longer about left

7:28 or right about right or wrong this race now we're having

7:32 with all of THESE MAPS SINCE THE RUCHO VERSUS

7:36 COMMON CAUSE DECISION WHERE THE SCREEN COURT SAYS HEY YEAH

7:39 PARTISAN GERRY MANNING IS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC BUT WE'RE NOT GOING

7:42 TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT AND NOW they're allowing this race.

7:45 Well, this election has to be about

7:47 those fundamental rights, not right or wrong,

7:50 but will Americans have basic fundamental rights like

7:53 the right to vote and the right to fair representation?

7:56 Because this race to the bottom we're on is wrong,

7:58 and the desecration of the sacrifices and struggles

8:02 of so many people from different races.

8:05 Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner dying in Mississippi for voting rights.

8:10 This has got to be about more than just a political election.

8:14 It's got to be about us affirming our rights as past

8:17 generations did when the Supreme Court tried to set us back.

8:20 So then what do people do?

8:22 Because what they are doing,

8:24 THINK IS AN ASSAULT ON BLACK POLITICAL POWER IN THIS COUNTRY.

8:27 NOT JUST BLACK ELECTED OFFICIALS BUT BLACK PEOPLE.

8:29 IN MEMPHIS, I KEEP USING THIS EXAMPLE, STEVE COHEN,

8:31 THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN that represents the district that Memphis

8:35 sits in, he is not black, you know?

8:37 But it is the black voters in his district

8:39 that are disenfranchised by the decision that Tennessee made.

8:42 So people can overwhelm the ballot box this November,

8:45 but they are working to dilute the power.

8:47 So what do folks actually do?

8:49 Because I agree with you, I think we're in a post-Reconstruction period,

8:52 and the last time it took 88 years.

8:54 We don't have another 88 years.

8:55 So first of all, I just want you to know

8:57 that people want this to be about black folk.

8:59 versus non-black folks.

9:01 I want to tell America very clearly

9:04 that when blacks have exercised their political power,

9:06 they helped usher in voting rights.

9:09 They helped usher it in labor rights.

9:10 Civil rights.

9:11 I mean, white women are the big bet

9:12 are the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action look

9:15 at the number when black people are given free

9:17 access and fair representation they help to advance our overall

9:21 democracy they want to pitch this is us versus

9:23 them you've got people like Stephen Miller that want

9:25 to talk about creating some kind of race

9:28 conflict in our country this is about justice it's

9:31 about understanding that these principles when you expand justice

9:34 for irish when they said no irish or dogs

9:36 apply when you expand justice for jewish americans

9:39 to pray like they want this is about creating

9:41 a better democracy for all so this is not us or them this is not just black

9:46 people losing their rights this is weakening our overall

9:49 democracy it is about the ideals that they said,

9:52 as Martin Luther King said, a promissory note, all are created equal.

9:56 The Supreme Court has, in my opinion, yes, it is a corrupt court.

10:02 Whenever you have billionaires being able to shower

10:06 Supreme Court members with trips and RVs and more.

10:10 This is a corrupt court.

10:12 It's a corrupt Congress when you have

10:14 people taking PAC money from corporations, trading stocks.

10:18 It's corrupt White House when you have billionaires.

10:21 Literally, he sat the rich and the wealthy behind him.

10:23 He's talking more about his ballroom than he is about gas prices.

10:27 We need to take our country back,

10:29 and we see the forces right now trying to upend our democracy.

10:33 This election is a moral election, and it is a movement election.

10:39 And all Americans should understand that we're in this together.

10:41 Stop letting them slice and divide us.

10:43 Do these funky maps to try to divide people against each other?

10:48 No, this election is about fundamental fairness and democracy,

10:51 and we need to start treating it like that.