In a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker criticized President Donald Trump following a pair of weeken...
In a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker criticized President Donald Trump following a pair of weekend shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left dozens dead.
The president is “sowing seeds of hatred in our country and this harvest of hate violence that we’re seeing right now lies at his feet,” Booker told host Chuck Todd.
The New Jersey senator and presidential contender for 2020 focused on what he called the “moral bonds and fabric of our country” and said that “we are all responsible to each other,” with the president being “particularly responsible.”
“I, my faith has this idea that you reap what you sow,” Booker said.
Then he pinned blame on Trump for the “harvest” of violence.
Watch Booker’s remarks below:
Booker repeated the common Democratic claim that gun violence is the result of the president’s rhetoric.
“When you have the president from the highest moral office in our land talking about invasions and infestations and s—hole countries, the kind of things that come out of his mouth that so harm the moral fabric of our nation, he is responsible,” Booker said.
Booker’s remarks come after the unearthing of an online manifesto, allegedly written by the El Paso shooter, that argues for racial segregation and decries the “threat of the Hispanic voting bloc,” according to The Washington Post.
While Democratic politicians and left-wing journalists alike have sought to draw parallels between the manifesto and Trump’s comments on immigration, The Post reported that the author of the document explicitly states that “he has maintained his white supremacist ideology for many years, predating President Trump.”
Booker also criticized the president for taking “no action whatsoever to even condemn white supremacy.”
The New Jersey’s statement, however, appeared to be off base.
In a Monday speech, Trump declared that “in one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy.”
Despite the president’s denunciation of the “sinister ideologies” that appeared to be behind the El Paso shooting, Booker continued to berate the president for his response to the attack.
“The president is weak,” Booker tweeted after Trump’s televised speech.
The president is weak. And wrong.
White supremacy is not a mental illness, and guns are a tool that white supremacists use to fulfill their hate.
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Democrats criticize the president for not condemning white supremacy and then continue to criticize him when he does exactly that.
The goalposts are ever-shifting.
To politicians like Booker, Trump’s words will never be strong enough.
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