CNN "State of the Union with Jake Tapper" - Interview with Cory Booker

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Senator Booker, thanks for joining us.

I know you have personal experience trying to both combat racism in the police force in Newark and also address some of the underlying issues of poverty and crime and hopelessness being brought to light.

What goes through your mind at a time of crisis like this?

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): I think you can't help but have your heart wrenched when you witness what we're witnessing.

We are a nation -- we're really one nation. This is not a quaint ideal. It's an inescapable fact. And when you see the horrible, horrific murder of George Floyd, you know the history from which it springs. You know the depth of the pain and anguish, where black people in communities all across this country live in fear of the police.

And you understand that this -- what we see manifesting right now is not just the reaction to a live or caught-on-tape murder, but to deep wounds within our society, within our body politic that are festering in our country and must be addressed.

And we do not -- we are not manifesting the conviction, as a society, to heal ourselves. And, right now, you're seeing the consequences of that.

TAPPER: You criticized President Trump this week when he tweeted -- quote -- "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Obviously, it's an infamous quote from a racist sheriff in the late '60s. The president later said he wasn't calling for shooting and he wasn't trying to echo that racist Miami police chief, who notoriously used police brutality against black Americans during the civil rights movement.

What do you make of his explanation?

BOOKER: You know, from Donald Trump, even before he was president, this full-page ad condemning to death the Central Park 5 exonerated people, to his calling entire cities in our country rat-infested, rodent-filled places of filth, to his not -- ability to condemn Nazis, every time I respond to Donald Trump, I do it from a place where I realize he doesn't deserve a response.

He doesn't deserve my attention or my emotion. Our people do.

I -- Donald Trump has -- no longer has the capacity to break my heart, to surprise me.

But I say this all the time. If America, though, as a whole, if America hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough. And if you still love this country, then remember the words of Martin Luther King about people like Bull Connor and people like George Wallace.

He said, what we have to repent for is not simply the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people.

The good people of this country, that's where my love goes, and that's where my heart hurts for, because what folks -- and I see it all over social media right now -- what folks are saying and hurting and this emotion, where is that emotion when we don't capture vicious violence and murder on tape, when so many Americans are dying at the hands of the police, and we don't even collect the data on it as a federal government, as a society?

Where is the response to the everyday violence, that we live in a nation with such toxicity, from Cancer Alley to Duplin County, that is killing disproportionately black people, because race is still the greatest indicator of whether you live around a toxic site?

Where is the outrage and the anguish in the hearts of Americans, when we claim to be the home of the free, but our jails and our prisons have a quarter of the globe's incarcerated people, overwhelmingly, disproportionately black people for nonviolent crimes that others do with a cavalier disregard because they know they will not be tried for that?

And so this is a moment in America that can't just lead to a momentary outrage. We have to begin to do the concerted things that so many of our great heroes, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Shuttlesworth, tried to demand that the conscience of this country remain disturbed and uncomfortable, until actual laws are changed that bring more justice to our country.

[09:25:14]

TAPPER: Like what? Like what laws need to be changed to bring more justice?

BOOKER: So, I will be very specific.

My team right now is currently drafting legislation, obvious legislation, number one, to change Section 242 that governs misconduct for police in this country. That needs to be changed, to create a national police registry for misconduct, which will help us to stop officers who accrue such large actions of misconduct, and then have nothing happen to them.

I'm -- we are drafting legislation around the use of force incidents and how we have to create greater transparency and accountability for them.

We're drafting legislation that bans racial and religious profiling. I could continue. This is not like we don't know what to do, Jake. It's that we have not manifested a collective will to get it done.

We come from a nation that it seems to take these spasms of protest and discord to get people who are comfortable on the sidelines witnessing history, to get them onto the field and began to make history, to make us to be who we say we are, a nation of liberty and justice for all.

And so we know what to do. There are things we can do. We are not helpless. We are not weak. We are strong. But as a guy who always says that you can't lead the people if you don't love the people, we need to be a society of great brotherly and sisterly love, a beloved community.

Well, what does love look like in public, as one of my heroes says? It looks like justice. And we have a -- we have steps, concerted steps that we have to take.

And my worry right now, amidst this time of pain and hurt and rage, is that, in a month or two, people will go back to normal. Well, normal -- normal is to see so much of our nation hurting and in pain. And, again, we are one country.

You can no more take one -- a knife in one hand and stab the other arm and think that that's not going to hurt your entire body, than to be a nation right now to have so much environmental injustice, economic injustice, racial injustice, criminal injustice, and not think the entire body is going to suffer. We are all weaker because we have allowed so much injustice to last so long.

And so now it's a time to take this energy and this anger and this focus and keep it, until we actually change laws and systems of accountability that can raise standards in our country.

TAPPER: Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, thank you so much. Appreciate your time this morning, as always.

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