Senate Democrats engaged in a fierce shouting match on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon with Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker accusing his fellow party members of betraying their party and condoning authoritarianism.
The New Jersey Democrat delivered a blistering speech after heading to the Senate floor to object to a slate of bipartisan police funding bills offered by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Catherine Cortez-Masto and Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, which passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously. Booker excoriated his Democratic colleagues for not doing enough to fight President Donald Trump and said their bipartisan legislation was tantamount to complicity with the administration’s policy agenda.
“What I am tired of is when the President of the United States of America violates the Constitution, crashes our normsand traditions, and what does the Democratic Party do?” Booker said on the Senate floor. “Comply? Allow him? Beg for justice?”
“No, I demand justice,” Booker continued. “The Democratic Party needs to wake up.”
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Booker said he wanted to offer an amendment to the package that would seek to counter the president’s ability to rescind grant funding to certain state and local jurisdictions. Klobuchar and Cortez-Masto criticized Booker for failing to offer the measure during the markup and suggested he missed his chance to add it to their bloc of bills.
The bitter spat comes as the Democratic Party is engulfed in questions over how much the party should be pushing back against the president. Booker, who is rumored to have 2028 presidential ambitions, torched his Democratic colleagues for not endorsing his “fight” mentality.
“The Democratic Party was about to give Donald Trump tens of millions of dollars when he has already told the Democratic Party, ‘I’m not gonna let blue states have this,’” Booker told reporters following the shouting match. “Democrats need to learn to fight and fight him and stop him from hurting people.”
“There’s a lot of us in this caucus that want to fucking fight,” Booker told reporters after his public broadside against his Democratic colleagues on the Senate floor. “This, to me, is a problem with Democrats in America right now is we’re willing to be complicit.”
Klobuchar notably hit back at Booker, accusing the Judiciary Committee member of failing to show up to the hearing devoted to approving the legislation to provide input.
“One of the things I don’t understand here is that we have committees for a reason, and we have hearing for a reason, and you can’t do one thing on Police Week and not show up and not object and let these bills go through and then say another [thing] a few weeks later in the big speech on the floor.”
“These and the other police bills passed during Police Week — police officers are sitting there in the hearing room when no one objected,” Klobuchar said. “I can’t help it if someone couldn’t change their schedule to be there.”
Booker expressed outrage with Klobuchar’s comments suggesting that the New Jersey Democrat failed to show up to the hearing to offer his perspective.
“Don’t question my integrity. Don’t question my motives,” Booker responded. “Dear God if you want to come at me that way, you’re going to have to take it up with me because there’s too much on the line in America.”
“When are we going to stand together if we don’t stand as Democrats,” Booker continued. “We deserve to lose.”
The public verbal spat came after months of polling showing that Americans’ approval of the Democratic Party is at its lowest point in decades. A Wall Street Journal survey found that 63% of voters have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party — the highest percentage in 35 years.
Hailey Gomez contributed to this report.
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