Sen. Cory Booker: Living His Values

to pass through the Senate. And they voted to discuss the healthcare bill and emotion to proceed, which means that they can commence debate. And these are the formal Brian they voted so they can discuss the bill. They voted to start talking. Anyway, we shouldn't we shouldn't overlook. This is the one year anniversary of our podcast, Katie Anniversary. The universary ran too, and we're back where it all

started on Capitol Hill. That's right. One of our first podcasts was with Senator out Frankin and we walked around the halls of Congress and talk to folks. And this was, of course before the election. We are six months into the Donald Trump presidency, with a lot of Democrats standing in front of the Capital and basically talking about the need to preserve the Affordable Care Act. And we spoke to a lot of people who are gathered here mostly against what the Republicans are trying to do, but one

or two Trump supporters as well. We did hear from a lot of people who are extremely upset. For many of these people, it's a matter of life and death, and especially for those who have children with disabilities who rely on Medicaid for their care. Um, there are a lot of very emotional people. Let's listen to what some of them had to say. I have a son with Down syndrome and his future depends on Medicaid. With these cuts, it's really hard to see how he live independently in work.

That's why almost of us are you today, people with disabilities who rely on Medicaid simply to live. Do you think this is going to make a difference to have people come out like this, definitely, because this this cuts across party lines. Um, you know, disability doesn't discriminate. There's millions of families with a member who relies on Medicaid because of a disability or an aging parent. And also have two of those, so you know, this is a real crisis for a lot of people in this country.

A lot of these people are here worried about what these changes will mean, specifically to their disabled kids. Tell me how you're feeling about the whole debate where I don't care, you don't care, I don't care about the bit about them. Um, just kind of just say I don't care. Whatever the president wants, I'm for, So I would say I'm for the along the place, and I'm

not particularly concerned about how they license. You know, the Congressional Budget Office, as I'm sure you probably have heard, estimates anywhere from twenty to thirty two million people will lose their healthcare if Obamacare is repealed. And I'm curious how you feel about that. Sad, but it's not enough for you to speak out against the president or this

pending legislation. What medical conditions do you have? I have sereal posing and I just require um in home care people to get me out of bed, help me do the things that everybody does to get ready for the day. And if services get cut with this healthcare bell um, I would wind up in a nursing room. Our services like mine would be the first to go. You walked all the way here to Washington. We'll have to get them to hear her voice. Tell me about Lauren and

why you're here representing her. She can top should never speak. She came off. She can't stand up, So I walked for her because she can't walk, and I stood up for her because she can't stand, and I'll speak for her because she can't speak. They need to leave children like her out of politics. This is not a political issue. This is humanitarian. This is his life. This is a human life. Has nothing to do with a Republican or a Democrat, or left or right, or conservative or liberal.

This is like, of course, we're hair Brian though to sit down and talk with Corey Booker. Uh, he's here at this rally. He's actually still m seeing the event on the steps in front of the Capitol and apparently can't stop talking. It's just an editorial observation, our interview slightly. Well, I'm looking forward to hearing from Senator Booker about all kinds of things, what's happening here in Washington and the country,

his views on this health care legislation and Russia, President Trump. Yeah, and his presidential aspirations. Many people have seen him as a rising star, so we'll hear what he has to say about that. Although, Katy, you can't swing your purse where we are right now without hitting a potential Democratic presidential candidate. I think I've seen a half dozen of them in the last twenty minutes. That's true. Here is

Senator Cory Booker. Welcome to our podcasts and what a day here in Washington, d C. God to say, for a second, you and I've been friend for a long time. I feel I feel at a disadvantage when I'm being interviewed by you because I feel so comfortable with you. I might just be telling all, well, if you want to break some news and announce your candidacy for feel free. I will announce I am running in for re election. Does New Jersey law permit you to run for both?

I don't even know the question, Brian interesting, Sure you're going to figure out the answer that question pretty too. Are very mischievous and and Brian is very prepared. But he was pulling stuff out of my bio in the elevator. How did you know my favorite breakfast cereal was Captain Crunch Crunch berriers, drink Diet Mountain even though your girlfriend tells you not to. Well, before we talk more about

you and your background, it is a eventful day. Yeah, let's talk about from your perspective, how do you process what just transpired? It is so unconscionable for and I think for those of you don't know. John McCain gave a very dramatic speak in the Senate after he voted to proceed to a bill when he didn't even know what was in the bill. I mean, this whole process, from this very beginning is a betrayal of every Senate tradition, every Senate custom. Uh, it's even a betrayal for all

those people who thinks Obamacare was just shoved through. Obamacare had hundreds of bipartisan meetings, committee hearings, hundreds of witnesses. He actually was amended multiple times by the Republicans. Did pass with nary a Republican vote. Absolutely, but there was a process that was akin to what the Senate is supposed to do, where lots of people are invited in. As John McCain himself said, this was a process that was done in secrecy, behind closed doors. Just a handful

of Republicans, no hearings, no witnesses, no input. It was roundly condemned by non partis and not by parts of a non parts and groups the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association, American Cancers ACIDE, I mean, everybody who we think of as beyond politics in the medical and healthcare industry world condemned this bill the a r P. And so then suddenly, literally the people are being interviewed in the in the days before this Republicans and saying, I

don't know what's in this bill, and they just voted to proceed to a bill that they don't even know what's in it. And that's what's uncomfortable to me that this is what has just transpired in the United States Senate.

But what didn't they basically say, and didn't John McCain say in his speech Senator that we need to discuss this, we need to consider it, and as a result, isn't it possible that the ultimate final bill could look very different than the one that they've just sent to Yes, well, he actually went even further, which again said he wouldn't vote for it, wouldn't vote for it and its current incarnation and its current recarnation less. It changed quite a bit.

But he like others, I'm glad I've expressed skepticism about voting for a bill. They gave massive tax breaks to the wealthiest amongst us, savage Medicare to the tune of ten to fifteen million Americans, drove up costs for older Americans, undermine access to Medicaid for people in extended care. There's a lot of parts of this bill that were hard to pack the stomach for House members who were hoping

Republicans over here would change it. But I haven't seen a change in which Mr mcconnells could hold together the disparate members of his co coalition from the Rand Paul's and Mike Lee's Susan to the Susan Collins and UM Senator Murkowski from from Alaska. But of course he held the Allian together. Today, I don't past the motion to proceed, and so that a lot of Democrats believe that these complaints, these criticisms among Republicans ring hollow because ultimately their votes

are different than their statements. Absolutely, well, let's go to the president. I mean the president. If you just take him on what he said, I won't cut Medicaid. I won't cut Medicare. I'm going to provide healthcare that because greater access that is more affordable. And I think the exact word he used was terrific. Healthcare is gonna be terrific. Well,

this bill on account on an unqualified manner. CBO as well as many other outside experts have said, this will make healthcare more expensive for the average American, it will restrict access for tens of millions of Americans, and it will drive down the quality of the care that that many Americans have access to. So this is nothing like what people have been saying. Where we should be and even what John McCain said today is we should all take a breather. What did the affordable care acter that

we like? Most Americans love, the pre existing conditions preserving Most Americans like Medicaid expansion. Obviously some governors didn't do it. Most Americans are like a lot of aspects, parity between mental health care and so called physical health care. There's a lot in this bill that people liked, and so let's hold the line on those things and try to improve the things that are some what problematic. It's problematic for example that in the health care exchanges, a small

percentage of people weren't getting subsidies and more. Well, are you hopeful then that there will be uh some kind of compromise going on as things move forward? Or do you think that now Republicans have been emboldened by this motion to proceed or whatever you call it. So the Senate doesn't give me hope. What gives me hope is

what the American people have been doing. Incredible outpourings of protests from people on both sides of the political aisle, cramming into people's town hall meetings, demanding that they walk away from a bill that would hurt them and their families. This is the week I would say that people who have to have to speak up again and let let folks know there'll be consequences if they vote on such a disastrous bill that will hurt American families of all backgrounds,

all geographies, all races, all parties. Democrats have spoken in very general terms about fixing Obamacare. Your position is sort of mended, don't end it, But what specific improvements or

changes do you think should be made? Well, look, I'm one of those Americans that believes that we need to have a different philosophy of healthcare needs to be made real and legislation, which is that healthcare is are right, that we need to have a nation in which everyone is covered, in which everyone has affordable and quality healthcare. That should be the end that we should express now.

I believe there's lots of avenues to get there. Should there be single care well less, I'm saying medicare for all. We we almost we were one vote shy, I say we, I wasn't in the Senate. Then when the Affordable Care Act pass of extending Medicare down to people aged fifty, I believe that would have been the small end of the wedge. I believe at the end other end of that would have been people saying, Wow, it's working. Medicare is working for now, for people all the way down

to fifty, Let's expand it for everybody. So I think the Medicare for all idea is a really good idea. Public options are a really good idea. But I do I'm a big believer that the way we're trying to go about this is actually giving lots of profits to private interests that that uh that are taking money out of the health care system and adding great expense to it.

But in the meantime, I'm also a realist, as John McCain said today, that you know, given where we are right now, with the Democrats in the minority and Republicans in the majority, and Republicans and controlling two Houses of Congress and the White House, that we're going to have to try to do what you said, men, Obamacare, don't end it, make it better, and do some incremental changes before we see unless we see Congress change that doesn't

seem very desirable politically, does it. I mean, the they, the president, and many of these people ran on the platform of getting rid of Obamacare, appealing Obamacare. I think they're not going to want the appearance of mending, not ending, because it will still be Obama. This is the thing that almost right. Well, no, I don't think. I don't think you're right, because here's the president we have found can lie to the American public, can have Fox News

respeating everything that they're saying. You don't think he could have said I'm bringing in trump Care and we're going to do this and this and this, but the real bill would have just amended it. He could have called it anything you want. He's one of the best carnival barkers I've ever seen in American politics, who could tell people that he was transforming healthcare and really what he did was keep everything people liked and made things better.

He could have done it that way, in a bipartisan way. Here's a president who has missed opportunity after opportunity to be who he said he was going to be, the great deal maker. This is a guy who had a wide opportunity to be a unifying force in this country, to bring people together to deal with our major issues.

But he has completely botched it, and instead he's appealing to a very narrow base with outrageous demonization and demagoguery, the kind of things that are hurting America given his campaign. Are you really surprised? I'm disappointed. His campaign was outraged me.

I mean, I I was so company he was gonna lose because I did not believe anybody can ascend to the White House in this day and age by demeaning and degrading other Americans, whether it's Mexicans, Muslims, uh, people in inner cities, even the way you talked about African Americans, all these things, Uh, not to mention women Um, I didn't think that was possible, but hey, I was wrong, And I think a lot of Democrats were wrong because they didn't understand the level of pain that people were

going through and how Donald Trump was founding a way to talk to that pain, um in ways that Democratic leaders were not. And so here we are in this condition right now. I just I'm curious in terms of this healthcare legislation. Is this going to come back to bite Republicans in the butt in two thousand and eighteen if they in fact support a bill that leaves many people uninsured? I certainly hope. So, I mean, are you guys going to really make Hay with this? Listen if

you hurt my neighborhood, my community. I live in Newark, New Jersey. I live in the Central war The median income in my neighborhood is fourteen dollars UH per household. When I walk around my community, people are really worried and really afraid. And this bill that they just proceeded to, which we don't really know what's in, but if we listen to the CBO and their past versions, this bill will devastate communities like mine, rural communities, cities across this

country people with disabilities. I mean, it's a devastating bill. So will I politically say if you guys do this, you should suffer the consequences at the polls? Heck yeah, I hope that happens. But I got hours now, and I'm gonna do everything I can to fight to prevent that from happening, because I'm not looking for political advantage. I'm looking for helping people, and we should stop this

bill um from happening. What do you make of the argument that just as the Republicans have moved too far to the right, Democrats have gone off the left side of the cliff, Because how so? I mean, well, I think on trade, you could make the argument that they've abandoned the Trans Pacific Partnership, buying a bunch of arguments that aren't really legitimate about what it would have done to American workers, when really it's automation far more than

trade that have cost jobs. On single payer, my home state of California, which has Democratic supermajorities, tried to pass single payer and it didn't work because the cost of it was more than the whole state budget and there was no answer for how it could be affordable. Um, and some of the rhetoric. This is not my opinion, but the opinion of many independent analysts is us versus them.

But for them, isn't a Muslim or a Mexican. It's a billionaire or a banker, or somebody in one of the industries like prescription drugs or healthcare that Democrats have decided are not good for America. So I'm a former mayor, and um, you know, I think the Wall Street Jurnal said I was the twenty one person in American history, goes straight from being a mayor to being a United States Senator. I had to fix stuff, um that I couldn't use philosophy. As Fiolor Litt Guardias said, there's no

Republican or Democratic way to fix a pothole. You just gotta fix it. And and that's the way I view the country right now. And I've seen I've seen Trump trash trade deals as much as you see people on on either side of the aisle doing it. I don't think my party, in a very pragmatic way, is going off the rails in some way. I don't want to use the spectrums of left and right, because I'm not

even sure what is left what is right anymore? I think that that what we, what the core of my party is saying, are pragmatic things that in a balance sheet analysis UM, which is what I had to use every day as a mayor, that net net they create wealth, they create growth, um to create opportunity. And I'll just give some things that people might want to characterize as

left like, let's say something like funding housing. Well Seattle to study a great organization called Plymouth Housing Group out there said what is more expensive supportive housing for people with special needs and mental health issues or keeping them on the streets. They actually found out they saved the million dollars to taxpayers by taking people off the streets and putting in support of housing. Why well, people who ran cities know this. They end up in our emergency rooms,

end up in our jails. It's more expensive to do the morally on sound thing. Let's use another example. Why is it that all of our competitors have paid family leave and universal preschool because they know when you invest in children, it is in a global knowledge based environment. It is the most valuable natural resource of country has is no longer coal or gas or oil. It's the genius of your children, and you've got to put an

environment to cultivate that. So I can show you all the things are the core base of the Democratic Party that appealed to people from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren all the way to Mark Warner, uh And and Joe Mansion. Things that we believe in, like raising the minimum wage. We now have data that looks at places like Seattle and other places. It shows that you don't crush small businesses.

But I thought, I thought, Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, But I thought that it really did cause a lot of people to lose their jobs in Seattle according to a study that a lot of businesses had to fire people when they raise the minimum wage. So I saw it was out on Fox News or something exactly. Know, there's been some data that's come out that's been highly disputed about the impact of minimum wage. But let's pull

back in from Seattle. There's so much study about places that raise the minimum wage, including New Jersey, that raises in the minimum wage um did not affect a business growth. And in fact, the best evidence for that is that when the minimum wage was established in the nineteen sixties, in real dollars, it's much higher than it is now. If you just had kept up with inflation, it would be over fifteen dollars an hours. So if it was

undermining growth back then, um um, it wasn't. In fact, those years sixties seventies were some of the greatest expansions of the middle class we've ever seen. So so I just wanted, I just believe that that I forget democratic rep publican investing in children, investing in seniors, investing in

the poor. Uh, We've got to be a nation like our past, like in the forties and the fifties and the sixties and the seventies that invested in Americans and invested in America education, infrastructure, science and research and development, all those things that this generation of Republicans have turned our government away from. And other nations including immigration, by the way, other nations Canada, Germany, Japan. What are they saying,

Oh my god, look what America's turning away from its past. Well, we're gonna out America. You. We're gonna invest in our infrastructure more than you are, except for building prisons. We're gonna invest in education more than you are. We're gonna invest in immigration. What do they have out in Silicon Valley. They say, hey, can't get your H one B visa,

come to Canada. We want you because college presidents come to me and say, we're graduating people in degrees I can't even spell micro immunology, biology, whatever it is, And as soon as they finish their student visa, the brightest minds of the planet Earth, we kicked them out of our country. So we've got to get back to doing what actually worked in a are going to build out the middle class, to close the race gap, to give more people avenues out, social mobility, out of poverty, into

the middle class. That other countries are not doing better than us. We need to get back to being better at being America than other people are. Why do you think Hillary Clinton was unsuccessful of prosecuting the argument that you just made, and why do you think that it seems I think there was another survey I read recently. I read so much sometimes you can't even remember what you read and where that said people still don't know

what Democrats stand for. It wasn't there a recently. Y're trying to fill in that gap with the agenda you announced this week. But why have Democrats failed to make this case that Hillary. Well, look, I think that we need to get back to understanding as a country, all of us, that we have a common pain and we need to get back to a common national purpose. And for some reason, we don't feel like we have a

common pain anymore. I've visited from the rural areas UH that are predominantly white and poor in my state, to the to the minority areas UH inner city areas are predominantly Black, Latino and poor, and the struggles people are having are so much the same, whether it's trying to incarcerate yourself out of a drug problem and you're seeing people getting arrested outrageous raised not getting drug treatment, to not having schools that are providing the kind of pathways

to middle class jobs that we need. We have a common pain, but we haven't talked about a common purpose. But there's a lot of evidence that Donald Trump won not because of economic pain, but because of cultural identification and polarization. Many of his voters were not economically struggling or were economically better off than they were when they

voted four years ago for Barack Obama. So if it's just about Democrats providing a stronger economic message, um is that actually sufficient Tandon from the who's extraordinary leader of the Center for American Progress today and a very close

aide to Hillary Clinton. Yes, and she was saying to me that she was looking at a map of Clinton voters versus UM Trump voters and he's and saw that you had these interesting UM realities where you saw a lot of these urban areas where are starting to grow again. I mean New York, New Jersey where I was mayor, first time, the greatest economic development peers since the nineteen sixties. Um. You see population growth, first time since the nineteen sixties.

There are population is growing. You're seeing a lot of these urban areas that are starting to see economic growth and opportunity. You're seeing a lot of folks supporting Secretary Clinton where she want. You're seeing a lot of these other areas that are not there, that are losing factories. And I agree with you more because of the microchip than Mexicans, UM, but are starting to see a loss

as coal mining towns. A lot of people that are suffering economically and nobody is showing them that this is an inclusive vision for America. UM. That Donald Trump was able to come in there and exploit that pain and actually say it's not your fault. It's the Mexican's fault. It's not your fault, it's the Muslim's fault. It's not

your fault. It's these crazy left wing people who are serving the elites and really sold them this idea that we don't have a better economic plan where I know, fundamentally, if you are struggling in a rural town, which party is fighting for the earned income tax credit, Which party

is writing for the raising your minimum wage? Which party wants to fight against more tax brates for the wealthiest of people, and more opportunity for you and your schools and your community colleges so you can afford education or training. That's the Democratic Party. But Donald Trump was such a good carnival barker that he strolled on in two places where the people voted for Obama twice and really sell

to them this US versus them. Any Time a leader tries to divide this country against itself, we should reject that leader. Any Time a leader tries to say we're all in this together, we need each other, we have one common destiny, that's the leader I want to follow. Unfortunately, Donald Trump played the divide and conquer and he was able to win the presidency. And he's still trying to

over in that way, dividing and conquering. But he's dividing this that the Senate, he's dividing the House, and what's happening is America's getting the raw deal. Do you think Bernie Sanders ever plays divide and conquered politics? Look, I think that a Senator Sanders provided a vision for this country on policy that was bold and visionary to say, hey, we need to be a nation that educates again and pointing out the reality is how expensive it is to

go to college. It's something that's really, I think, very attractive to me. And so he painted in broad strokes, bold strokes that capture the imagination of a lot of Americans. And so did he vilify this US versus them wealthy

elites and what have you. I'm a person that said that my style of politics is I'm not gonna demonize anybody, and I'm not saying that that Bernie Sanders did, but i am'm gonna point things out like the ridiculousness of carried interest for crying out loud, I mean, you gotta be kidding me. Anybody who's benefiting from that massive tax loophole, while there are people inner cities that are struggling with environmental desolation because we can't fund clean up super fun

clean up sites. I mean, Dear God, give up your carried interests so that we can clean up the most toxic environments that are poising our children. That's inexcusable to me for people to be able to benefit and ways through the tax code that are hurting other people. Now I'm not demonizing those people, but I'm calling out things that our nation is doing that it's hurting people. It's time to take a quick break. When we return more with Senator Corey Booker right after this, and now back

with Senator Corey Booker. I think for a lot of people, you're probably more famous than well known, and so we want to give people a better sense of who you actually are, where you come from. Threw up in a small parents were two of the first black executives. Start. I was born a poor black child with no rhythm, and that was Steve Martin. Yes, you know that. I think these jokes now in front of millennial audiences and

they give me blank faces. Yeah, I'm actually an eighty year old man in a in a thirty five year old year old. That's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to be. But I talk a little bit about your childhood Corey for Senator Booker for people who are listening, because, um, you've had such a fascinating life, and paint, uh what life was like in a mostly white New Jersey suburb

called Harrington Park. Well, I think the great drama of my life happened when I was only a full months old, which is to be born to two black parents who really struggled, Um, and are products of a revolution in this country. They are products of a civil rights revolution and rode that wave of the struggles of so many people who opened up doors, including them, that opened up doors for them that were unheard of in the black community.

My father born poor to a single mother who used to say, son, I can I couldn't afford to be poor. I was just poe peel, I couldn't afford the other

two letters. Um, this is my dad's child. Seemed to get worse the older he got, But the truth is he but my dad did grow up in a segregated town in the mountains of North Carolina to a mother who couldn't ultimately take care of him, and was taken in by a family in the community, raised in the Black church, who put money together in a collection plate to try to get him off to a historically black college, where he landed in the midst of the Civil Rights movement.

The sitt In movement started right there in North Carolina, and next thing you know, he's watching the country change, rushing with his friends to join up with people of all backgrounds to fight to tear down these roles of segregation. At that time, after college Lantern Washington, d C. Where we're sitting and again right place, right time, right education, it was activists in the Urban League and other places that started putting pressure on companies or working with companies

to hire their first ever blacks in certain jobs. So my dad becomes the first black person hired by IBM in the Virginia area as a salesman. And then you put qualified people, I don't care if they're if they're gay,

if they're people with disabilities. You give qualified people an opportunity they thrive, and next thing you know, my dad is just their top five percent of global salesman gets a promotion up to Manhattan, and he will tell you at that point in his life, and it's a late twenties, he was living a life beyond his dreams of a small kid in a in a poor town. And so my mom the same story, I mean, really so similar.

She actually had two parents that My grandfather was a U a W, one of their first early black um UH union workers, and was able to provide my mom with even a little bit more stability than my dad had. And my grandmother and grandfather raised my mom and sent her off to Fisk University, a great HBCU and in in Memphis, Tennessee. And she herself moved to uh d C started working in their public schools as a speech pathologist, and then also became one of IBM's early black executives.

And so here you have these two folks, products of the Civil rights movement, products of historically black colleges, all these interventions that tried to create a more equal society. And then they try to move into Harrington Park, New Jersey, this incredible town which I would grow up in, but they were denied houses in this area of Bergen County. So again activism had to try to step in, and again, you know, with the sting operation. These incredible lawyers in

their fair Housing council and activists. They let my parents go look at the house, and then they would send a white couple to look at my house. The house. Afterwards, my parents loved this house. They were told it was sold. The white couple found the house, found it was for sale, put a bid on the house for my parents. The bid was accepted, papers drawn up, and on the day of the closing, they surprised the real estate agent and surprised and they but amazingly when the real estate agent, Yeah,

but the realestate agent didn't capitulate. He didn't just say he got me um. He actually got up and punched my dad's lawyer in the face and singing a dog on my dad. And after this big melee in this office, lawyers got involved the whole thing, and eventually they relented and we bought this house and we moved in. And so my father used to tease us and call us the four raisins in a tub of sweet vanilla ice cream.

And so imagine just this. By the time I'm eighteen years old, they spent eighteen years lecturing my brother and I do not forget where you came from. Do not forget the struggle that got you here. You drink deeply from wells of freedom, liberty, and opportunity that you didn't dig. My dad's smart remark to me would always be, boy, don't you dare walk around this house like you hit a triple. You were born on third base, and you can't pay back all those people that fought for you,

struggled for you. But your damn well going to pay it forward by finding a way of being a service. And my dad was impatient. You know who would have thought his son. I went to Stanford University, and I always have to confess I got in because of a four point oh and sixteen hundred four point of yards per carry, sixteen hundred receiving yards. I used it all the time to let people know that I got it

because I was. I got it because I was a damn good fotball player, at least above average high school football player. Yeah, but my so. But my dad, as I'm doing all that stuff, He's like, boy, you've got more degrees in the month of July, but you ain't hot. When are you gonna When are you gonna do something

for this country? You you were you were given all this privilege and this opportunity to join the fight because you won't be called to you know, ride buses on freedom rides to march to Selma to register people to vote, and folks were dying Goodman Cheney Schwarner in the sixties. But all those people put that effort out for you.

What are you going to do to prove worthy? So my brother and I, who were programmed from an early age to feel this sort of outrageous gratitude to this country, but also this understanding is my father, who raised us in the Black church, who always kept us close to the black community, you know, family and Newark, you name it.

I wanted to point out to my brother and I that there are people struggling outrageous injustice is not of their own making, and you need to be justice committed dealing with those injustices as your as your ancestors, your parents and grandparents and their generation were committed to fighting

injustices that existed then. So you mentioned new Work. I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that in your last year at Yale Law School, you commuted two hours to and from Newark in order to go to classes, which is pretty rare thing to do. You didn't grow up in Newark, your parents didn't live in Newark. What what connected you to Newark and why

did you decide to make your life there? Well, gosh, by the time I was in law school, I had um from the time I was eighteen to graduate in law school twenty seven, that like decade was all about cities for me, and everywhere I would go. I just wanted to be a part of cities and not only the urban struggle but also the urban imagination and trying

to create better things. And so I had some family and the way you call your parents, close friends, aunts and uncle's who lived in New York, who new New York, and I had grown up sort of coming back and forth there, and I just felt connected to this community and decided that that's where I was going to move. And my dream was to be Jeffrey Canada. He was my hero coming out of law school, who was the

head of something called the Harlem Children's Zone. And if you read his book for Stick Knife Gun, you see that he looked for the toughest neighborhood he could find and moved into that neighborhood and so I said, you know what, I'm going to do the same thing. You lived in public housing. I moved into on Martin Luther King Boulevard, the southern part of that street in Newark. Um was was um greeted with my stuff being stolen in my car when I was moving into this small place.

But I met heroes, I meant, and I mean some of the still some of the most moving up. And I was saying at my BA from Stanford by my PhD on the streets of New York. I've read that. I mean, if you you had to think of one person who really taught you something. I was intrigued by that statement. Who was the best teacher you had? Well, incredible professors in the pros, they were professors, they were

street professors, were professors of the neighborhood. So ms Virginia Jones, who was a tenant president of the building that I would move into, this these tough projects, whose son was murdered in the lobby of the building in which I lived in the eighties. Um, she you know, she caught me right when I landed in New York from Yale. Put me in my place real quick. She says, like you're gonna help me, She goes, describe this neighborhood. I still remember this moment where she says, I'm like what

she goes described the neighborhood. And I described it like it was at a crack house that I live right next to, and at these the projects. I described that sort of a tough view of neighborhood, like anybody would probably see with their own eyes. And she just said, you know you can never help me? Then, uh? And I go why she goes, because the world you see outside of you is always a reflection of what you

have inside of you. And if you're one of these people only sees problems in darkness and despair, that's all there's ever gonna be. But if you're one of these stubborn people who every time you open your eyes you see hope, you see opportunity, you see love, you see the face of God, then you can be someone that

helps me. And I began just by sitting in her apartment and watching people line up at the door a different times to come into for help, whether they needed their son, needed a job, or they're having difficulty meeting the rent or the worst slum lord I had ever sort of experienced um, which we eventually took on and eventually got convicted in federal court. But she was this amazing person who lived her life to serve others. And

she was fierce. I mean, she was tough. I mean she was a five feet in the smiseon toll but intimidated me at six ft three. Um, and uh, you know she she's passed away, now, are you kidding me? Um? I couldn't go a day or or or multiple days without her calling me up the bark orders at me, even when I was mayor of the city. And um, look she she taught me the definition of hope, which was that hope is not It doesn't exist in an abstract. Hope is confronting the wretchedness of the world. Uh, seeing

the depravity. Hope doesn't exist in abstract. You can't have great hope unless there's great despair. Hope this active conviction that despair will not have the last word. So yeah, here's this woman. They murder her son in the lobby of the building. She and I were probably to the highest net worth owners in those buildings. We could have lived anywhere. But she never ever left. Uh like Maymie

Till who kept Emmett Till's cough and open um. She decided that she was going to be an agent of hope and instrument of hope in the world that desperately needs it. And so it was women like her that taught me. And I I broke a few times in my time in New York, and I still remember after witnessing a horrible time where a young boy died and I just wanted to give up. I was so angry

at the world. And this woman I'll never forget. It was just her and I in the courtyard of these projects, and I'm this big guy, but she just held me like a little child, and I just broke inside. I I soaked her shirt, just weeping on this woman's shoulder. I was so angry and emotional thinking about it right now. And all she did was hold me and say over

and over again, stay faithful, Stay faithful, Stay faithful. And so that to me is this message right now and most Americans, and and this has been interesting, and I lost my temper a little bit in a speech I was giving yesterday to a bunch of lawyers about everybody wants to focus on Donald Trump. There's outrageous injustices going on this world Before Donald Trump, you know, people said, oh, Corey, there was ten percent drops in African American votes in

places like Michigan, and and and and and Pennsylvania. And I'm like, it's not just people in rural white communities, just people in urban black communities were beginning to lose faith that this government's going to do anything because we're not seeing each other or suffering. I went through Louisiana and and um Mississippi in Alabama a few weekends ago, just to visit places in rural America, uh to Lassie, Alabama, Union Town, Alabama, and and just to bear witness people

pack these churches because they couldn't believe. Uh. They were so grateful that a federal official was coming down and looking at the hell in which they're living because we allowed the worst type of hateful hypocrisy and corporate villainy.

Where these companies locate environmental disasters, whether it's uh landfills or imagine a place that everybody knows it as cancer alley, where these petrochemical companies are releasing hundreds of times higher rates of carcinogens and to the air than other communities, and people are just saying why won't anybody do something? And why do we accept it? Is it racism? So look, I think racism is something we need to confront and

tell the truth about. Why is it? When you ask Harvard to study I think it was them that asked Americans to to picture a drug dealer black and white Americans say somebody black as the majority Americans to picture a welfare recipient, and the majority of them will describe somebody that's black, majority of both of those circumstances or plurality or white people, and and and so I do think racist this pernicious evil that we don't speak enough

because it often puts people in defensive posture as opposed to speaking to it in a way that calls to our compassion or empathy for the truth. And So what's your question is does race complicate and compound this problem? Hell? Yeah, when you have a criminal justice system rightfully, as as

Michelle Alexander calls the new Jim Crow, it is. It is devastating uh aggravating racial problems in this country in terms of disparities and an outcome because there's no difference between blacks and whites for using drugs or even dealing drugs. In fact, some studies show that young white folks have young white men have a little bit higher rates. But you and I both know, all three of us who went to college campuses, nobody at Stanford was getting stopped

and frisked for using drugs. Um, there's no FBI stings on the local fraternity. And you and I all of us know. And I don't mean to put you guys in implicate you guys in this, but you know where to get the pot from the adder roll the ecstasy the Brian, Brian definitely does no where to get ecstasy. Guy, Okay, you take me well, but but rich and privileged people. We live in a country is Brian Stevenson says, well, you get a better sense of justice if you're rich

and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. I love Brian Stevenson, just parenthetic. He's like the Mandela of America. Why doesn't he run for president because he's doing more important work and making more of a difference than he could. Uh, oh, you don't really believe that he's making more of a difference than if you were president in the United States. I think the reality is I thought I thought I heard it more. It's like, why doesn't he run for

the Senate? Clearly he's getting more done in the Senator. If I can blink my eyes and replace the current president with Brian Stevenson, I think that we would be pleased before we completely lose the threat of your biography. Sorry, we're limited on time. So you know one thing, you are very famous for all these good works, the ten day hunger strike to draw attention to drug dealing. You spend a week subsisting on the budget of a food

stamp recipient. You have lived in one of the most crime plagued areas, not just in your state, but but the country. And I think for most people this is all extraordinarily laudable. But the knock on you among some snarky liberals is that these are these are stunts. As I was researching uh this podcast, Salon wrote, He's done a lot of stunts designed to make people aware of poverty, or at least to make people aware of Corey Booker's

awareness of poverty. And I'm just curious, what's your reaction when you see something like that? Um, I don't. I mean, look, if people are not criticizing you, you probably aren't doing that much to make change, to make a difference. And you know, I love my neighborhood. And if people want to say, in fact, I know lots of leaders have decided to go live in the projects for a week or something like that. I've lived in my community for eight years in brick Towers, and I still live in

that same neighborhood right now. Um, I love my neighbors. It's my community. I'm not doing it, uh to bring attention. I'm doing because I love my community. And frankly, I'm living my values. I think that we have divided ourselves too much. We put walls up against um. So I just love where I live, and I love and I am who I am. It's hard to have an eight year stunt, isn't it. Yes, or now it's twenty years.

Twenty years in fact, when I become mayor, I decided to move into the only time I've moved out of the neighborho i've lived in, and I lived in there eight years before mayor, and I've lived there since. I've become the center. This is my community. But I moved aside to move into the section of the city as mayor where they were the most shootings. Now, what if

all of our leaders had to do that? Because what I call a hateful hypocrisy is when you are comfortable because your family and you live in a nice neighborhood. You're sworn to uphold this Constitution to liberty and justice for all, but but your family is not on the line. Um. Bryan Stevenson talks about the importance of being proximate. Yes, you know that that we're also sided when he warned his priests go out and be amongst the people, smell

like the people. Um. I just think there's something powerful about leadership that doesn't separate itself, doesn't put itself above, puts itself with And I swore to myself. In fact, Miss Jones made me, literally made me. She said. This is when I was left the city council. She warned me that often we left people count and they leave us. And I made a commitment to this amazing woman that I will not leave where I live. I live still in that community. I've decided your campaign song be me,

Me and Mrs Mrs Jones. I hope people will giggle that song got a thing going on. But how do you think that like if if I sing it every podcast. So thank you for allowing very nicely. But I just want to ask the question, what would what would what would be doing right now? If about super fun sites if every Senator like me live within a mile of a super fun site, or about how senator didn't have What would we do about violent crime? If every Senator had to live in the part of their state with

the most violent crime. I don't know if any other Senator had a shooting on their block this last month or two, what will be doing about violent crime? What would be doing about a drug addiction if every Senator lived across the street. I love Cross Street from one of Integrity House facility. I've gone and sat with the men and women who sit in a circle of recovery. I just think that I don't care what people say about it. My entire adult life, I've lived and worked

in inner city communities. And over my desk in my office, UH is the map of the central ward of Newark where I live. That's where my career professional life coming out of law school started. And every decision I make, whether it's battling for healthcare, for prescription drugs, long coast of prescription drugs, whether it's dealing with the criminal justice system, whether it's infrastructure. I actually want to use the lens of the community which I live in to guide my

decisions because I love it when I go home. You know, folk don't take me seriously, and I don't take my title seriously. They take me seriously, but they don't care. Uh, they don't actually don't care about the politics often the debates and the positioning. What they really care about is, hey, this is what's going on in our street or And when I was mayor, it gave me great satisfaction. I got to see to stand there with people and saying, look, we got that park built, we have that new supermarket

in town. We're building some new affordable housing here. And as a senator who has to come down the watch and every week, I don't want to be pulled too far away from the urgencies that got me in politics and the responsibility I have to the people. You. There was an OSCAR nominated fabulous documentary about your first campaign, which is I always advise that you're gonna have a spectacular failure in your life. Have a documentary team there to capture. Yeah. I think I think he comes across

a little better than Anthony Weiner and his documentary. I will say that you want you want to know the ignominy, and that's not it. Uh, the real shame of the documentaries that so, my most humiliating loss gets captured in this documentary film gets nominated for an oscar and guess what it loses to in the Academy Awards. March of the dag Nab Penguins. It's like, it's hard to compete with the peg and and and and Morgan Freedman for crying out loud driving Miss Daisy like he's got the

best voice in the world. If he had narrated our film, we probably would know. It's the old Hollywood rule. You never compete with the animals because the audience always likes the thoughts. Compete with Freman, that's as well. But yeah, you won president. You won four years after the campaign that was captured in that film, And probably the thing that got the most national attention was Mark Zuckerberg coming in. Please tell me that that was not the most national attention.

I can give you more things that captured it, but that was a big moment. That was a big moment, and he offered to spend a hundred million dollars, did in fact spend a hundred million dollars to try to turn around Newark schools, which you said would be a model of educational excellence, and other philanthropists came in with

even more money us. How do you assess the results of that experiment an outrageous success if you just look at the data of the New York school system and I got by the way, he wasn't the only factor contributing to the success as the school system has had. But let's pull back and look at what does the data say about the New York school system? Now, well, we just recently, not recently, it's been about it over a year. Were ranked the number one city in America

for beat the odds schools, high poverty, high performance. So you have schools that have taken kids from extraordinarily different circumstances graduating him. Number two is you hear an African American kid in New York, which is the majority of our kids, and they tended to be in the in the worst performing schools. Your chances of going to a high performing school from the time I was mayor to

about now went up three hundred percent um. The overall performance in the New York school system on reading, math went up double digit percentages. Our graduation rate went up double digit percentages. So you know, in terms of a school system a very short period of time giving parents incredibly quigh quality options. In fact, as the studies have shown better options and most inner city public schools have uh, it's it's been ridiculously successful. We still have work to do.

But the supercharged success of our schools, especially that one ind cey about more likely now if you're black and Newark to go to a high performing school, is pretty dramatic. But New York charter schools outperformed district schools. And I'm just curious why there's so much controversy about charter schools within the Democratic Party. Largely because of teachers unions. Well I wouldn't say largely because of only teachers unions, but that's a big factor, a big factor. But let's let's

try to separate the critics from the criticism. So I will join people in criticizing charter schools if they are endangering public schools, if they are creaming the best students, um, if they are not held to the same standards of performance as traditional district schools. So I always say, let's filter out the the critics and just look at really what we want. Like if if a charter school moved

into a rural area, you've gotta be kidding me. Like Heidi hide Camp and Tester, we talked about this all the time. It just wouldn't work and it would endanger

the system that's there um um. So, So there are legitimate criticisms in general of charter schools, and that's why in Newark we try to do things a different way, creating a one enrollment plan so you're not creaming people, um, trying to appropriately finance our school system, which is always a battle, especially with a Republican governor, so that you're not in any way creating a lack of equity and

funding a lot of things. I think that you can do in an environment like Newark where charter schools can work. But but charge schools aren't for everywhere, and you have to make sure that they're being held to the same standards. You emphasize public schools, but why shouldn't poor kids have the same opportunity as rich kids to go to a private school If that's the right choice for them again. I'm one of those few Democrats that says I think that we should have a system that doesn't just work

for the rich and the wealthy. That's why I've supported things like the White Fellowship in Newark, which takes under the most narrow circumstances. If your chill child is stopped in a routinely failing school um and it is poor and does not have the ability, I think the public should be saying to that this is a crisis of monumental proportion in the public should do whatever it can to get that child out of that environment. And I believe in what you call whatever you want, but a

rescue package for those children. Do I support charge schools and innovation in the right context, in the right environment, as we've seen in New York, I will fight for them. Do I support rescuing kids that are in dropout factories and things like that with interventions. Absolutely, But at the end of the day, we can never as a country abandon this idea of great public schools for every child. So there are a lot of issues we want to hit and we have very limited time in which to

do it. But you mentioned mass incarceration earlier. I know you're very passionate about this issue. It's a major problem in this country. And this was supposed to be the one thing that could get done last year on a bipartisan basis. Uh, it failed, Senator Booker and ran Paul together using the Senate No, it's one of my earliest thing they're used in the Senate, and it failed in part because of h then Senator Jeff Sessions leading the

opposition to it. Why didn't that legislation come together? And

what are its prospects now? So, first of all, it as a guy who's now closing in October my full four years in the Senate, Um, there's no better journey that I've seen so far than me coming into the Senate and hearing Chuck Grassley going to the floor and speaking against the innovations and reforms that I wanted to overtime becoming a partner of mine and other Democrats in a very ambitious and progressive bill that actually got out of the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan votes and almost as

if it got votes on the floor, it would have gotten eight plus votes. And so yeah, as as older senators or senators have been here longer, put their arm around me and say, look, sometimes it takes two or three Congresses to get something done. Don't give up on this. And not only haven't I given up, but we're pushing

more legislation. Legislation focused on women in prison because folks don't know that about eight percent of the women in prison are survivors of sexual trauma sexual abuse, and we put them in more trauma when we put them in prison. We focused on marijuana, which you gratefully interviewed Rand Paul and Iana. But that coalition has expanded now more Republicans, more Democrats jumping on to reform a marijuana laws again most Americans. The reason why injustice is often fester because

most Americans don't realize it. So we have people that have lost their voting rights for a lifetime. One out of five African Americans in Florida cannot vote because of felony disenfranchisement. And many of them were for doing things two of the last three presidents admitted to doing Remember Bush and Obama. It wasn't smoking a little bit of marijuana, It was felony drug possession of drugs more serious than

than marijuana. So here we have this hip ypocrisy in our country where if your privileged kid going to a fancy college, go ahead and experiment all you want. I've sat in this body in Congress listening to colleagues joking about the laws that they've broken, broke, but they were privileged people. They didn't have to worry about it. They

could flaunt the law. Meanwhile, if you're that seventeen year old kid who's walking home gets caught with a little bit of drugs, you're done because not only do you get arrested, now we stack mandatory minimums. I've had children sitting in my office pleading with me about their stories to do something about the fact that the prosecutors said to them. And by the way, we don't have juries and and and judges and trials anymore. Of our criminal

convictions are done by plea bargain. Because if you, Katie, without seventeen year old kids sitting in my in my prosecutor, I can say, look, I'm gonna move to adult court. I'm gonna stack your charges. You're gonna face fifteen years for your nonviolent crimes. Or you can plead guilty. Now you can get out. I get a win, you get a felony charge. Now you can't get a job, you can't get a pell grant, you can't get business licenses, you can't vote done. And what does that seven year

old think? Now he probably his public schools probably didn't serve him, doesn't have that greade of an education. Now he's a criminal charge. What is the likelihood that they're going to recentervate and get and get back into trouble again because we're not empowering them to succeed. That's the system we have right now. It's broken in so many different ways, and it's stacked against poor people, mentally ill people,

addicted people, women, people of color. And so this is the fight for me, is taking on this system in every single way. And I was relentless when I was running for this office. I didn't care if you put me through the wealthiest community in New Jersey, of the poorest community Jersey. I was talking about this issue even though it didn't pull. It's one of the top concerns of my my state. It is one of the biggest cancers on the soul of this country and is costing

us so much money. From the time I was in law school to the time I was mayor of the City of New York. We were building a new prison every ten days in this country. And so if you don't think this mass incarceration, the fact that we have one out of every foreign carcerated people on the planet Earth, the major already them for nonviolent crimes. If you don't think that's hurting us as Americans with the depth that we have, you're crazy and it's making us less safe,

not more. Let's do our quick lightning round because I know we have to catch a train going back to New York. And you've been so generous with your time. I was late because of the protest. That's okay, It's a real treat just to have this conversation. Um, just just quick answers if you will Donald Trump discuss I just mean, what do you make of him and his presidency?

Because every day there seems to be a new event that's causing consternation, National consternation, which kind of sounds like constipation. I hate to say it's maybe it's a little bit of both metaphorically. Um, Look, I think the thing that offends me the most about this presidency, Um, if a Republican one day would be pushing policies that I fundamentally disagree with and that would have been a battle Royale,

and I would be upset about that. But I think what is making this presidency is so difficult for me, for my Republicans in the Senate colleagues, um, is that this guy is so trashing the norms, the dignity of

the office as he trashes Americans. I mean, here's a guy that's more upset about north Strom's dropping his daughter tweeting about that than he is about the Russians invading our attacking our elections, which he still doubts, he doubts the conclusions, which Scaramucci, the new Communications Directors, said that

he's still doubted the conclusion of these agencies. But then that is what he's doing, is continuing to undermine institutions in our country, whether it's the press, attacking the press, our First Amendment ideas. Every single week it seems, um he is attacking our intelligence agencies as as a candidate, he attacked our military. I know more about this than

the General's. The guy that was going to have a plan to end isis in his first whatever days the Russian when I talked to the first time, I sat down with the ambassadors from Latvia, Lithuanian Estonia. These are Baltic nations that border the Soviet Union, and they were saying, excuse me, god, flashback. I'm not that old. I was still in high school when we had we had this

old union, um. But they border the Russians, and their warnings to us almost like the chickens coming home to roosts, like you weren't taking us seriously when we were telling you that the Russians are seeking to undermine Western democracy. And everybody I talked to in Eastern Europe when I was there, said you all need to wake up. This is how the Russians do what they call a hybrid war.

Not only is your physical content conflict, but then they take us on with propaganda, with cyber attacks, trying to get people to lose faith in their and the and the information they're getting from the press, lose faith in democratic institutions, lose faith in the electoral process itself. And so, if anything, the president's rhetoric is complicit in what our what our adversaries are trying to do undermine our faith

in democracy. We can our election system, we can our free press, and we can the very institutions that he represents as president that include everything from the military to the intelligence. Isn't Mr Yale Law School? Can the president pardon himself, pardon his family, pardon his associates, and fire Bob Mueller? So this is this is and I just wanted to take one step back on that question because this is why I came down here with a big afro, pull all my pulled all my hair out, Thank you

very much. You should have seen his afro. I never thought I would be sitting in interviews and it would come a day where questions like that would be asked, like with a straight face, like like the fact that we are sitting here as Americans and wondering if a president can preemptively pardon himself for serious crimes is to

me astonishing. So if it's proven, people, the question is is can the president preemptively pardon himself and pardon his is or not even preemptively pardon himself if it's proven, pardon the people in his senior staff. This is a frightening moment for America that we have serious questions like this being asked. It was actually frightening to me. All the accusing accusations of collusion, you know, they were denying. People are saying, for me, it was like a lot

of political noise. But when I read an email, we're literally people are saying a foreign government wants to cooperate with your campaign to beat your opponent. And Donald Trump Jr. Says, if this is real, I love it. That alone, when that email came forward. I can't tell you what their public statements were, but the conversations around this place were just stunned that you literally have a smoking gun of the intention of Donald Trump's most senior advisors seeking to

colude with the Russians. To even go to that email itself should have been turned over, and then they all went to the meeting, and they all went to meeting. But do you think the patriotism do you think the trip drip drip has in fact somewhat normalized this because it comes so frequently and so often, it seems as if there's a kind of an explosion and then it dissipates. I've become comfortably numb. Um. No, I am not no, But I don't mean for you necessarily, I just mean

for the public at large. Um, do you think at some point they're just being They're so a wash? In scandal that nothing sticks, and that's how I know that's not true. The public at multiple points has stopped bad things from happening more than I have as a Senator. So, whether it's the independent ethics overside of the House that was shut down by public outrage, Version one of the House Healthcare Bill shut down by public outrage, uh, the

version one of the Muslim ban. I mean I watched one of my greatest moments as an American was witnessing out of Dallas Airport all of these people chanting and cheering as Muslim families that weren't even necessarily American citizens. Watching people with yamicas on showing their true faith and cheering people coming out of that airport reminds me of the story from the Bible and the Torah of of of Abraham sitting there in pain and watching strangers come

and he runs to them joyously and welcomes them. I mean that this is us living our values. The Women's March. I sat down in New Jersey recently with four incredible women activists who weren't involved before but have been awoken by this crisis. So I'm seeing the best of America. It's just like Mr Virginia Jones. Hope is a response to despair, and they're not letting despair win. They're showing their patriotism, showing their their power by engaging now like

they never have before. We're almost out of time, but we have to ask Corey, don't we Bryan about running for president? Well, I'm running from the president. If you haven't heard already, I'm like, out of here. Do you rule out running for president? In so let me tell you a horrible confession. But it's out there in the public already. But but I but I've never said on a podcast before. Well, look, I was mayor and I was trying to figure out what to do next. You know,

run for re election for a third term, run for governor. Uh, run for my life and get that out of politics. And one of my guy who has never let reporters be your friend. That's why Katie is such a threat to me. But Tom Moran is one of my favorite journalists in America, and he's just hanging in the end. It's always bad at the end of an interview, when you're really comfortable, you start joking. He goes, what about Senate? Would you ever run for Senate? And I unfortunately said

if I ever run for Senate, please stop me. And I invited him to do violence to me, um in a very grotesque way that I regret um doing. And everybody can google and everybody and anyway, anyway, I didn't say off the record. And he you know, this is why Tom I have You're still friends. I have a love hate relationship with him. So because of course, what did he roll out when I finally decided to run for senate and which I could not have envisioned. Um, he didn't do to you what you suggested. He he

did not do to me. But he did expose me for saying such a dramatic thing that never that I would never enough preamble. You're filibust. I cannot see it. I'm very intent on trying to earn a real in New Jersey when I am Oh, yeah, I'm sure that's gonna be a very tough campaign for you. No, in your quiet moments of self reflection, yes, do you think about I try to empty my thoughts when i'm meditating. That's what I do. But the power off, Okay, after

you're meditating, after you're done meditating. And he's a vegan too, so he's probably just meditating about how much he misses he doesn't a vegan meditator in the White House. Are you still a vegan? I am still a vegan and a lifetime vegan. It's a middle lifetime digress digressed. So are there any circumstances under which you would say, you know what, I feel a patriotic duty two to change, to work on all these issues in a way that I have so much power I can really really change.

I will make you a deal right now, I'll make news. If you run for president, I will run as your vice president. Just like right, it was just like you literally had a physical reactions. Okay, he's not going to answer the question, the question see myself running for president? Okay, right now. Well, Corey Booker, Senator Booker, thank you so much for giving us so much time and for inviting us into your little hideaway, which is your secret office

that people have here on Capitol Hill. I'm sorry there is not a full bar here um because because apparently some of the more senior members do, they're kind of tricked out with a whole bar situation. But the cafe car the Acela, I've definitely visited that a time, so we're looking forward to that if we make our train for lunch dinner. Sorry Booker, thank you. Yeah, we better get the heck out of Dodge, Thank you, Thank you both.

I appreciate you guys being so patient too. As usual, you want to thank our intrepid production team, including our producer Gianna Palmer, our audio engineer Jared O'Connell. Thanks also to Emily Vina of Katie Curic Media That Behemoth and Nora Richie for her production assistance. Alison Bresnik makes things happen for social media and we thank her for that, and thank you as always Mark Phillips for our theme music. Katie and I are the executive producers of this podcast

and everybody, don't be a stranger. Email us at comments at current podcast dot com or leave us a voicemail at nine to two four four six three seven. We love getting your messages, honestly, they truly make our day. You can also find us on social media anytime, at all hours of the night. When it comes to me, I'm Katie Curic on Twitter and Instagram and Katie Curic

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acid indigestion. T m I, Tom's Anyone Audios. Bye,