Flickr / Gage Skidmore
New Jersey Senator and Democratic candidate Cory Booker trolled a reporter from the alt-right site Breitbart today at a press conference.
“Hi, I’m Penny Starr with the Breitbart News, back to the lynching question…” Starr began.
“What is this ‘Bart’ that is ‘bright?’ Booker interrupted, adding “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
“It’s named after a person, Andrew Breitbart,” Starr replied.
“Is there? Oh really? I didn’t know that. And who was Andrew?” Booker asked.
“He was probably the pioneer of citizen journalism,” Starr replied.
“Oh, that’s fantastic,” Booker said, and asked “And are you a citizen journalist, or do you get paid for your job?”
“I’m a journalist,” Starr replied.
“You’re a journalist,” Booker said, and when Starr replied “yes,” he added “Okay.”
The amazing exchange got even better (see transcript below) but first here’s a clip.
WATCH
Watch Cory Booker Troll the Hell Out of a Breitbart Reporter: 'What is This Bart That is Bright?' https://t.co/ATUHExs19R pic.twitter.com/DLS0FoINNn
— Tommy X-TrumpIsARacist-opher (@tommyxtopher) October 24, 2019
“Real quickly, back to the lynching question, since Trump tweeted, there’s been a lot of outrage expressed, there’s also been a lot of reporting on Democrats have used that term over and over when Bill Clinton was being impeached, and other times,” Starr said, and asked “Can you comment on that please?”
“Yeah, I don’t know if you know this, but there have been a lot of Democratic racists in the past,” Booker said, and added “And I’m not talking about people that have used that word in recent history, I’m going back to George Wallace and the like.”
“And if every time we call out Donald Trump for behavior, and the first response is ‘Look at the Democrat!’, that’s not going to solve the problem,” Booker continued. “He is the president of the United States of America. Words matter. And excusing him because some Democrat use the same word, we weren’t taught those morals on the playground, for crying out loud.”
Booker then spent a few more minutes excoriating Trump, and said that “One journalist said to me that their spouse was crying the other day because they are afraid to speak Spanish in public.”
He also revealed that he has read classified “intelligence reports about what the Russians are doing to undermine our republic,” and said “God, I wish I could have ripped a couple of pages out and brought them into the public, because one of their strategies, I saw in detail, is to make us hate each other, is to pour gasoline on the lines that divide us and hope they tear us apart.”
Booker concluded his answer by saying that “we have a president right now who is making those words more real and scary than they have ever been in my lifetime. Republicans and Democrats, we know better than this. And we can’t allow it or excuse it, or else we are complicit in that as well.”