MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Cory Booker

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

MADDOW:  Joining us now for "The Interview" is Democratic Senator Cory Booker from the great state of New Jersey.  Senator Booker has been a member of the U.S. Senate since 2013.  B Before that, he was the mayor of the great city of Newark, and before that, a member of the Newark Municipal Council.  As of right now, he is running to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
 
Senator, it`s nice to see you. 
 
BOOKER:  It`s good to see you. 
 
MADDOW:  I was talking to my friend Chris Hayes today about our shows.  We met literally at the water cooler.
 
BOOKER:  OK.
 
MADDOW:  And he was like, I think you need to break the fourth wall and talk about the fact that you know Cory Booker as a person.  I was like, I talked about that before, but I don`t know that anybody believes me.
 
BOOKER:  You talked about one of the most embarrassing moments of my radio interviews, about -- we have a long friendship.  And I still remember hoping those clips from radio interviews will never be found because there`s a lot of personal stuff you talked about overlapping (ph).  So let`s avoid that right now. 
 
MADDOW:  You realize you just directed every oppo research in country to go find that stuff. 
 
(LAUGHTER)
 
MADDOW:  Listen, I never said anything bad about you because I`ve never known anything bad about you. 
 
But let me -- let me ask you, coming from that place. 
 
BOOKER:  Yes. 
 
MADDOW:  When you were mayor and the possibility aroused of you running for the Senate, I remember having a conversation with you just as people who knew each other, just as friends, where we were talking about whether that would be a good job, not about whether or not you could win, not about what it meant in party politics, but maybe you wanted to be a U.S. senator.  Having gone from -- and I had two different components: number one, it meant you would be going from being the guy in charge, number one person in charge of city government, to being 100 out of 100 in terms of seniority in the U.S.
 
BOOKER:  Right.
 
MADDOW:  And number two, it meant going to Washington.  And I remember talking to you about whether or not there was anything worth doing as a human being in Washington, and you didn`t know the answer to either of those but you did decide to run. 
 
BOOKER:  Yes, I had a lot of doubts about being a United States senator and you were actually really good because you directed me to people that you really liked.  One of them is a guy I have a lot of respect for, another potential presidential candidate Sherrod Brown gave me his phone number, and I went down there with some skepticism because so much cynicism is surrounding Washington. 
 
And I -- the woman in the projects who -- I live in her building for about a decade who first elected me, the reason the map of the central wards behind me said, don`t forget where you came from where the people got you in office.  And so, I remained in that neighborhood, but more importantly, I went to work on the tougher problems that affect people in the communities like the one I live in, inner city, low income communities.
 
And I`ll tell you, it`s been one of the most rewarding jobs I`ve had because I`ve been able to get a lot of good things done in the last Congress, couple very big things done.  One is criminal justice reform, which literally is going to liberate thousands of people -- just the crack cocaine, powder cocaine disparities, making it retroactive will release thousands of people.  Ninety percent of them black.
 
If you look at the Tim Scott, who is a Republican from South Carolina, he and I sat and talked about poverty and why is it that the lowest income areas in America, rural areas or even inner cities, don`t get investment?  So, we wrote a bill that got very little attention to create incentives to invest in low income areas.  It`s historically probably going to be the largest economic development bill for low income part of our country, that will put hundreds of billions, if not tens of billions of dollars into rural areas, in places like Camden and Newark. 
 
So, I found a way of just buckling down, getting to work with people across the aisle, and know them and go to bible study with them and go to the gym, doing anything I could to build those relationships to get things done in an atmosphere of cynicism, where you think big things can`t be done, which is actually very similar to what I did in Newark, New Jersey. 
 
MADDOW:  That answers sort of both parts of that.  One, is there stuff worth doing in Washington?  You`re saying, you have found a path as a senator to do stuff that is worthwhile, that has a big impact. 
 
BOOKER:  Yes, and it doesn`t get the attention because people like the brawls and the fights and the like.  But very quietly, if you put your head down, you can get things done on everything from human rights issues.  I got -- I got a child, juvenile solitary confinement banned, effectively banned on the federal level by just fighting for the human rights of our children, all the way to animal issues.  I`m a big animal lover -- to massively end or and limit chemical testing on animals. 
 
Just very quietly, without fanfare, go to work every day, look for openings and look for ways to bring people together to fix stuff.  
 
MADDOW:  And bringing people together literally with your Senate colleagues.  I mean, you have been able to -- this is one of the things you`ve always done at least of course throughout the portion of your life where I`ve known you is you`ve been able to make unlikely friends and you`ve been able to start conversations with the people that might not necessarily be disposed to like you when they first met you.  You have been able to be constructive in terms of putting together legislation.
 
And yet, that would signal to me -- if I was reading a book about this -- that maybe you want to stay in the Senate forever and maybe you want New Jersey to keep sending you back, and maybe you want to end up being Senate majority leader.  You don`t -- you don`t have any cynicism anymore about what it means to be one of the 100 people trying to work together.
 
At the end of your first term, you have signaled that you`re done with the Senate and you want to be president instead.  Why that change? 
 
BOOKER:  Well, as a guy that led a city through crisis, we are a nation in crisis.  We have people who are losing faith in our ability to solve our problems, and more and more people in America just feel left out, left behind or that this democracy is not working for them.  And even worse than that, what speaks to my sort of sense of real crisis is that people believe the forces tearing us apart as a country are stronger than those that tie us together.  Well, I reject that.  And I know --
 
MADDOW:  Be specific about that, though, because that sounds -- that sounds like short rhetoric.  I mean, the -- what do people believe that is tearing us apart that`s winning? 
 
BOOKER:  So, look, you have a person heckling the president of the United States.  President Obama giving a -- giving a -- his State of the Union speech and you had a guy heckled him, goes out the next month, or next quarter, has one of his best fundraising quarters ever. 
 
MADDOW:  Yes.
 
BOOKER:  You have major networks who get a lot of money often by telling us to hate each other.  You have hate being spewed from the highest office in the land.  You have people in my community who just think we have a criminal justice system that treats you better if you`re rich and guilty than poor and innocent. 
 
You have kids in my neighborhood who say, hey, I`m -- you see people being arrested in my town for doing things that two of the last three presidents did.  You have entire families who raised their kids to do everything right and then they find out their kids have lead poisoning. 
 
And we have more jurisdictions, thousands of places in this country where it`s easier to find unleaded gasoline than unleaded water, and nobody seems to care about it. 
 
And so, when I go around, I still remember campaigning for Secretary Clinton and going to communities and often African-American communities, and folks pulled me aside and said why?  They just lost their faith that this system could work --
 
MADDOW:  In despair. 
 
BOOKER:  In despair. 
 
MADDOW:  And what I learned from -- what I learned from that same woman I mentioned before, my tenant president, I was taking my B.A. with you from Stanford and my PhD on the streets of Newark, is that her -- she taught me that hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word. 
 
And so, in the face of most despairing moments as my evolution into adulthood where more and more people are rightfully, understandably despairing about a country that what could do the kinds of things we do to our people -- people who are senior citizens work their lives and literally are living below poverty line, the Social Security checks are too meager, or people who have fear, shackled to fear because they worry if they get sick, they won`t be able to afford it, or if their child gets sick, they have to lose their job to be there for their kid because they are one of the only industrialized nations that doesn`t have paid family leave. 
 
There are people who are frustrated, and when they look towards politics, it`s the politics of tear down and take down or pitting people as opposed to calling us to finish the unfinished business to this country.  Where is the chorus of not just outrage which we need to have.  We`re so focused on Trump. 
 
Most of the things I mentioned were going on before Donald Trump was elected.  Massive environmental injustice.  Massive economic injustice.  Massive race and racism embedded in our systems going on before Donald Trump.  Obviously, he`s made it worse.  He`s a crisis.
 
But there is a worry and fear that we`re not motivated anymore, collectively, in the way that we were to meet other morally unjust things, whether it`s Jim Crow, whether it`s child labor that got so many Americans to come together to solve them. 
 
So, I want to be the president that helps us again understand that across this country, there is common pain.  This opioid addiction in the inner city and in rural areas, there`s people working full-time jobs and still living below the poverty line in suburban areas and factory towns.  To let people understand again that we have a common pain but we`ve lost that sense of common purpose in this country. 
 
MADDOW:  Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey is our guest.  We`ll be right back with Senator Booker right after this.  Stay with us.
 
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
 
MADDOW:  Back with us live in studio is Senator Cory Booker who is running to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. 
 
Senator, thank you again for being here. 
 
BOOKER:  Thank you.  It`s good to be here. 
 
MADDOW:  Couple years ago you became the first senator to officially sit down at the witness stand and testify against one of your colleagues at his confirmation hearing when you testified against Senator Jeff Sessions and his confirmation to be attorney general.  Are you still glad you did that? 
 
BOOKER:  It`s one of my prouder moments.  I sat next to Cedric Richmond, a young up and coming leader in the Congress, and John Lewis and felt this conviction because I don`t think Americans understand how race, especially race within the criminal justice system still punishes entire communities and Jeff Sessions is a guy that stood against constructive reforms.  It would have made a difference, not only that but against voting rights and against protecting LGBTQ kids. 
 
We knew and I`ve now seen it happen where the Justice Department would pull back from defending voting rights, defending civil rights, fighting against a criminal justice and broken and even just police accountability measures.  Things that are happening all around our country, holding police accountable and making sure we have a police department especially when police -involved violence that are doing --
 
MADDOW:  Dropping those consent decrees.  Dropping those -- 
 
(CROSSTALK)
 
BOOKER:  Yes.
 
MADDOW:  -- in the city.
 
Let me ask you about who is the man who is likely to be Jeff Sessions` replacement.  Am I right you voted against William Barr in committee in terms of him being confirmed as the next A.G.? 
 
BOOKER:  Yes, that wasn`t hard to do when he literally wrote the book.  I mean, he wrote a book called "The Case for Mass Incarceration" or something to that extent. 
 
MADDOW:  Yes.
 
BOOKER:  So, he`s originally one of the architects of that tough on crime movement that has devastated communities.  And when you say devastated communities, let`s just be clear, already, Villanova says we have 20 percent less poverty in America if we have incarceration rates the same as our industrial peers.  This nation, the land of the free, that incarcerates one out of every three incarcerated women on planet earth in America. 
 
What does that do when you have a non-violent drug crime for doing things that two of the last three presidents did?  Well, you can`t get a job.  You can`t get businesses licenses.  It economically devastates you as well. 
 
So, we have economic devastation.  Voting rights in many states taken away from people, disproportionately African-Americans because remember, the same, there is no difference between blacks or whites for using drugs or dealing drugs, but blacks are four times more likely, almost four times more likely to be incarcerated for it. 
 
So, you have a system of mass incarceration that feeds upon the poor, upon the mentally ill, upon the addicted, and among -- on communities of color.  And for me, someone who is not calling out that system that`s so broken, that wouldn`t even -- when I asked a question about implicit racial bias and policing, something that former FBI directors, big city chiefs talked about, hey, we need to do something about implicit racial bias.  He didn`t know enough about it to say it even exists. 
 
So for these reasons and more, I can`t support him but he did come to me.  I said to him after the hearings, would you come meet with me?  He came with others and usually its staff meet all around.  I said, can I just meet with you one on one in my office? 
 
MADDOW:  Uh-hmm.
 
BOOKER:  And I just wanted to make a heartfelt appeal to him from my own experience as a young black man growing up, my run-ins with police, on how we have this justice system that still needs people. 
 
MADDOW:  How did he react? 
 
BOOKER:  You know, he didn`t say what I wanted him to say and I felt at times I wasn`t getting through.  I gave him a book, which Michelle Alexander`s --
 
MADDOW:  New Jim Crow. 
 
BOOKER:  "New Jim Crow", and asked him to please at least read it.  It`s one of the most fact-based books, objective evidence about our bias systems. 
 
So, I felt it was honorable that he would come and sit with me and listen with me one on one on the issues. 
 
So, I`m a prisoner of hope always, but I`m ready and poised to keep fighting the Trump Justice Department as they continue to do attacks on voting rights, attacks -- or failure to defend voting rights, civil rights, and you name it. 
 
MADDOW:  I have something else I want to ask you about which I never heard you talk about and I have no idea what you think about it.  Will you stay for one more segment? 
 
BOOKER:  Yes, absolutely. 
 
MADDOW:  Senator Cory Booker will be back with us tonight.  Stay with us. 
 
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
 
MADDOW:  Back with us is Democratic senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker. 
 
Senator, thank you again for doing this. 
 
BOOKER:  It`s really great to be here, thank you.  This is a tremendous presidential platform to come to.  So, it`s good to be here.
 
MADDOW:  Yes, I didn`t ever mean for that to be -- 
 
BOOKER:  Yes, all of us.
 
MADDOW:  I have to not think about that or I can`t come to work in the day.  I can`t put it together. 
 
Let me ask you about the big field that you are joining.  A lot of women, and especially a lot of your women Senate colleagues --
 
BOOKER:  Yes. 
 
MADDOW:  -- are already running.  You are blessed among women -- 
 
BOOKER:  Yes.
 
MADDOW:  -- in the field right now. 
 
If you got the nomination, would you commit to choosing a woman as your vice presidential running mate? 
 
BOOKER:  I think it would be malpractice.  I`m not going to make any specific commitments, but we clearly should have -- I believe there should be a woman right now and works very hard to get one.  But we have such a great field of leaders, I think you will rarely see a Democratic ticket anymore without gender diversity, race diversity.  I think it`s something that we should have. 
 
So, I`m not going to box myself in, but should I come to it, you know I`ll be looking to women first. 
 
MADDOW:  I know that you have positive relationships with some if not all of the other people who are running on the Democratic side.  Certainly, I`ve heard that from everybody else about you and about each other. 
 
What do you expect the primary is going to be like?  What are you hoping for?  Can it be competitive and tough and trying while still being what you want from public life? 
 
BOOK:  Look, we have great people running.  This is actually an abundance of riches for the Democratic Party.  I hope that whoever wins, we all support.  It`s really important to me that we have full support of whoever that nominee is. 
 
But I`m just confident to tell my story, let people know I have a unique pathway to running for president, coming from an inner city, managing it during -- through crisis with great results.  So, I`m hoping that people will support me for who I am, in the spirit of -- look, it`s not just about beating Trump, it`s not just about what we`re against.  It`s got to also be about what we`re for, bringing this country together to solve seriously problems. 
 
And if people want to support me, here`s my plug, go to corybooker.com, and join the effort, join the fight. 
 
MADDOW:  Cory Booker, senator from New Jersey, my friend, thank you.
 
BOOKER:  Thank you.
 
MADDOW:  Congratulations on taking this stuff thus far.  I can`t wait to see how this works.
 
BOOKER:  I`m grateful.  Thank you so much.  Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source