Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Cory Booker:

I think that we need to reimagine immigration in our country writ large. We are allowing other nations to out America us. And so, what the Democratic vision must be is one about strong enforcement of our immigration laws that keep us safe and secure, and massively, massively expanding legal immigration into our country.

Preet Bharara:

Welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara. My guest this week is Cory Booker. He’s been the US Senator for New Jersey since 2013. He joins me to discuss his new book, Stand, where he reflects on the meaning of virtue and why we need more of it in our politics. That’s coming up. Stay tuned. Should Democrats fund DHS? Senator Cory Booker weighs in. Senator Cory Booker, welcome back to the show. So good to have you.

Cory Booker:

It is good to be back on with you in this crazy world.

Preet Bharara:

In this crazy world. So in this crazy world, you’ve written a book. We’re going to get to it in a moment. Stand. Very simple title. No subtitle. I don’t know if your comm folks told you, we’re going to go about 25 hours.

Cory Booker:

I’m sitting down at least. And will you allow bathroom breaks? Because that’ll make it easy for me.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Strom Thurmond was on the podcast not long ago and he went 24 hours and changed, so we need you to break the record. All right. That was my attempted humor to break the ice, although that’s not necessary with you. I want to talk about this book that’s about virtue. Not just one virtue, but a collection of virtues. But I suppose I should ask you about some things relating to the news. Your colleague, Senator, has just been confirmed to be Secretary of DHS. Is he qualified to be that?

Cory Booker:

Well, let’s first of all start with DHS, which is reckless, out of control. This is Donald Trump’s secret army. It’s funded to a tune that’s bigger than most nation’s militaries. And it is doing things in our country that have undermined the decency and really values that we all hold dear. It’s amazing to see what they’re doing, how unpopular it is even with the Republicans. So I don’t care who’s a head of that agency. This is Donald Trump’s secret police, and they’re doing horrific things from slamming people to the ground, dragging veterans out of their homes, doing property damage to Americans’ cars and homes. They have separated families. It’s just despicable. They’re charging to our churches, to our schools, and more.

So the head of it is less important to me than the fact that this is what Donald Trump wants. And if you want to know, just add insult to injury, he sends them to our airports now and is bringing that kind of chaos and frankly, cruelty even into our airports. Which I’ve heard from everybody from the Port Authority Police of New York and New Jersey, all the way to the airlines themselves who’ve joined me in this call, get ICE out of our airports.

Preet Bharara:

So if hypothetically, if you were a Senator, what would you do about it?

Cory Booker:

Well, if I was a Senator, I would do exactly what our caucus has unified in doing is not funding the agency. I’ve said very clearly, Democrat or not, I am not voting for another dollar for an out of control, reckless agency that is doing so much harm, damage, and even killing people in our communities. But right now, I’m very happy. The whole caucus is sticking together and not funding a DHS, and I’m hoping we stick to that.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think that Democrats generally have botched the issue of immigration? I’ve heard some people saying that Democrats should not have been so wishy-washy about having a closed border. Barack Obama enforced the immigration laws pretty strenuously, deported a lot of people. Have you had a rethinking or is it a matter of message? How do you think about the Democrats’ message and policy positions on immigration going forward?

Cory Booker:

Well, I’m going to pull back the lens here. I think the Democrats have made a lot of failures. I think that we collectively have failed this leadership moment. I’m one of those who’s angry with my own party on a lot of different fronts. When I was mayor of the city of Newark, there were two fundamental floors to service. The two most important things, the bottom of the Maslow’s pyramid of politics for me as mayor every day was to keep my community safe and make sure people had pathways to prosperity, let’s call it. So economically secure and strong, and safe.

Those are the two things fundamentally that every leader should be about, protecting your communities and creating opportunity, expanding opportunity. It’s why FDR pulled my grandfather and grandmother, and millions of other Black Americans from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, because they said, “We are going to make our community safe and secure, and we’re going to give new pathways of prosperity, even for an African-American couple living in Detroit.”

And so, this is where our party, I think, has come up short, is people trusting us that we can do those things, keep you safe and create prosperity. And I feel like we are coming to this end of an era in American politics, and it’s really a generational era, where the last of the baby boomer presidents we’re seeing right now, the last of the baby boomer heads of the Senate we’re seeing right now. It is a generational turn where heroes, like John Lewis and people I get to serve with like a Clyburn, they’re beginning to retire. And the question is, is what is the next generation of leadership, the millennials and the Gen Xes, what are we going to stand for at a time that Americans writ large are tired of both parties?

Preet Bharara:

So in that regard, what do you think about the border? Are we going to stand for no illegal crossings at the border?

Cory Booker:

I think that we need to reimagine immigration in our country writ large. We are allowing other nations to out America us. And so, what the Democratic vision must be is one about strong enforcement of our immigration laws that keep us safe and secure, and massively, massively expanding legal immigration into our country at a time that our economy is desperately needing it. Whether it’s agricultural workers or what the President of Stanford University once said to me, is that we let people in our country who get degrees in things half of Congress can’t spell, and then we kick these geniuses out of our nation. So the tired old debates, left right divide does not serve this moment when America has an economy in crisis. And remember, immigrants fuel our economy in such a significant way. Anybody looking at the math of America would say, “More legal immigration now.”

And where number two, we now have a world, and this is a large part because of the Republicans, where one person can get one weapon and kill horrific amounts of people in our schools, in our shopping malls, or at concerts like we saw in Las Vegas. So we have an obligation to make sure our communities are safe, but prosperous. If we’re going to compete in this growingly complex world we live in with technology, waves of technology coming at us, we need to have a clear vision of growth and prosperity, and fundamentally key to that is immigration.

Preet Bharara:

You used an interesting phrase that I hadn’t heard before. There are countries that are out Americaing us. What does that mean and which of those countries? You mean in terms of immigration, letting the foreigners in?

Cory Booker:

If you were born like my dad, he was born in 1936. The best place on the planet earth to be born poor, even if you were my dad, poor and Black, was the United States of America. 90-something percent of that generation did better than their parents. And it lasted up until about my generation came aboard in the ’70s and the ’80s. What was going on in that time? Well, one, we had lots of immigration. Indian Americans, for example, this wave of Indian Americans in that window were coming here. They were literally stapling… You’re a doctor, you’re a scientist, come into our country. What else was going on then?

Preet Bharara:

We came through JFK.

Cory Booker:

Came what year?

Preet Bharara:

1970?

Cory Booker:

Boom, exactly. During this period of extraordinary immigration growth, Irish, Italians, Indians, we were the center of immigration, but more than that, we had massive social mobility. We had a corporate culture, a free market, very different than we have now. New York Times did a great article about a janitor that worked for Xerox versus a janitor that worked for Apple. Well, back then, before this time of shareholder value only, quarterly reports, short-termism, in that time, the janitor actually worked for Xerox. They took their corporate education, tuition reimbursement program. That janitor could work hard for their kids, had health benefits, would come home and be able to climb her way up. She worked her way into middle management. The janitor that works for Apple now, doesn’t work for Apple. They outbid those contracts. They bid down their wages. They pay them poverty wages, literally where that job alone won’t help you live out where Apple has headquarters.

So we saw things in that time that was America’s spirit. Let me give you one more that we’ve turned our back on, which is the percentage of our GDP. We invested in research and science. We were the number one country on the planet earth for investing in higher ed, in research, in science, affordable college education. And God, we broke barrier after barrier of humanity when it comes to expanding human potential and possibility. Now there’s so many countries that out America us in that point. And you want to talk about immigration? I’ve saw the billboards that said, “Hey, you can’t get your H1B visa? Come to Canada.”

Australia is trying to out-compete us for bringing in the world’s most brilliant minds. There was a formula that made America work with everybody from factory workers to American farmers. We’ve turned our back on that formula. There’s massive corporate concentration and growth in power, where that power, especially thanks to Citizens United, is infecting our politics, which is making fewer and fewer richer and richer winners, and middle-class families struggling. Immigration is being throttled, especially by the Trump administration to historic lows and investments in things that we knew would return the most for our society, like education and science, has also been throttled. There are so many ways in which my father’s generation’s success has been denied to this generation, because if you look at the facts, this is no longer the best country to be born poor in on the planet earth.

There are a number of countries that are better in terms of social mobility, measurable index, in which people in the bottom can move. Classist England. If you were born there poor, it’s a better chance of you making it into the middle class than the poverty traps that we have here now in the United States.

Preet Bharara:

So how are we going to do some of that? That’s my segue to your book, sir.

Cory Booker:

Well, the segue to the book, I appreciate it, because the last chapter is about vision, and there’s chapters in there about the virtue of not just vision, but also creativity. It is time to renew America. It’s time to redeem the dream. And you don’t do that by surrendering your values and your virtues. Virtues are strengths. Virtue is strategy. It’s how we win. And my book really is an instruction book. It’s both inspiration and instruction on how during some of our darkest times, American light workers were able to renew, to redeem, to heal, to overcome.

Preet Bharara:

So the book is about virtues. You picked 10. I want to list some of them right here in my tabbed copy of your book.

Cory Booker:

I appreciate that.

Preet Bharara:

The table of contents. So agency, vulnerability, patriotism, truth, humility, community, creativity, perseverance, grace, vision. I will note, and I counted the pages myself, that the two longest chapters, interestingly, are vulnerability and humility, which is not how you would think about a politician’s book in this age of the alpha male. Can we start with that?

Cory Booker:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Why are vulnerability and humility 20% of the virtues that you talk about in this book and more than that in terms of pages?

Cory Booker:

Especially as you said in the time of the alpha male, I think we’re forgetting what masculinity is all about. I think that we are at a time of loneliness and isolation. And often what it masquerades as a sort of counterfeit brand of leadership is what we see currently occupying the White House. You’re perfect. You make no mistakes. You make no apologies. But if you look at the difficult history of the United States, the times we’ve been able to stride forward have been when people, men and women, modeled that kind of leadership. And I’ll start with vulnerability. My editors really pushed me to open up more about a really difficult chapter in my parents and my family’s life, which is the death of my dad through dementia and Parkinson’s. And what I found that at the very time I felt most shattered, having the courage to talk about that, my own failings and faults and my own hurts, those broken pieces of my mom’s life and my life actually created more points of connection with more people.

And by being open, and I saw this recently with a town hall of about a thousand people, a guy named Joseph Peters, who had intellectual disabilities, wracked with anxiety. He opened up about who he was and what he was struggling with before a thousand people, and it changed the room. You felt the energy and the room shift. You felt the community come together around them. And so, there’s something powerful about being vulnerable and not feeling like you have to be perfect to the world, about speaking about your pain and being honest that creates a lot of success. And I love that you say humility too. Both of those chapters, I really wanted to write in a way that could grip the reader with incredible stories, but also I was trying to write a brief. I was trying to write a prove a case. And the humility chapter, I actually found myself with too much material and I ended up using… Because we see Trump saying, “I’m glad Mueller is dead.”

Preet Bharara:

Good God.

Cory Booker:

But if you look at the greatest presidents we revere, and the chapter focuses on Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, and their ability to look at each other and say, “I don’t have all the answers. I disagree with you, but I can learn from you.”

And this is the extraordinary moment where the president stands, having virtually won a war. And instead of trashing the other side and talking like he vanquished evil, he humbles himself in that second inaugural address with malice towards none, with charity towards all. He talks about both sides being cancerously poisoned by slavery. It is amazing, but that relationship between the two men, some of the great writers I quote talked about that as one of the best examples of what happens when you are humble before another. The two of them formed a partnership, even though they really disagreed that ended up advancing our country through a war and into a new era.

Preet Bharara:

Tell the story, if you will, because I found it one of the most affecting stories just going back to your father. And then I’ll tell you my favorite quote in the book, which is also from your father. He suffered from Parkinson’s, which I understand is a very difficult disease. And you tell this story that you alluded to a moment ago, which must have been difficult to tell, that you go to dinner and your father needed help going to the restroom. And you are then the mayor of the city of Newark.

Cory Booker:

Yeah. As I’m struggling to unbuckle his belt and I say, “Dear God, please don’t let somebody walk in right now.”

As if God heard me, somebody walked in exactly at that moment. And I remember kicking myself for not going into a stall. And so, here we are at a urinal and I’m bent over trying to tug at his belt. And the guy walks in and I’m looking at the floor, and I see his feet stop and turn around. We were in Atlanta, Georgia where my parents lived. The next thing I know, I’m sort of holding my breath about what this guy is going to say. And then he just bolts out with this joy like, “Cory Booker. Oh my God, I love you, man.”

And he thrusts his hand towards shaking mind, and this is not a time I want to be shaking anybody’s hands. So I started to roll my hands up in a mock surrender. And then my dad, who had been, if anybody has had a family member with Alzheimer’s or dementia, he’d just been vacant. He hadn’t been there. But I look up at him and suddenly his eyes are twinkling, and he is beaming, because he knows that he did yet again what he loved to do to me and my youth, is he mortified me and embarrassed me, and took his big haughty son who, since the time I was a high school football, all American and was getting headlines in the country, he felt like it was his duty to keep me grounded and keep me humble.

And he just beamed like he had just achieved some great thing. The big mayor yet again was brought down to earth. And the humanity of that moment, it’s weird. And I say this in the book, that one of the most awful moments for me in my life when it came full circle and suddenly the guy that used to take me to the bathroom as a little boy. I was for the first time having to take to the bathroom, but yet it has now become one of my more cherished moments with him.

Preet Bharara:

And that leads me to a particular example of what you were talking about where your father humbled you. You write… What law school did you go to, that Yale?

Cory Booker:

Yes. I went to that Yale Law School.

Preet Bharara:

So you’re a fine alum of Yale Law School senator, a little bit of a mixed bag among the alumni, including in your chamber.

Cory Booker:

Yes. Yes.

Preet Bharara:

I won’t malign the school or those members any further here because we’re talking about bipartisanship. But the day you graduated from me at law school, which was a big deal, and we’ll talk about your origin story, I hope in a minute. You write that your dad looked at you and said, quote, “Boy, you got more degrees than the month of July, but you ain’t hot. Life ain’t about the degrees you get. It’s about the service you give.”

Cory Booker:

Yeah. I mean, it makes me emotional, because just miss my dad. And I’ll tell you, he didn’t care about the accolades. I mean, he was proud and everything, but he really wanted to know how I treated people. There’s a quote my dad loved. He was somebody who’s nice to you, but not nice to the waiter is not a nice person. So the worst thing he could see me do is walk into a room and not notice people. To this day, I will still… You and I both go to these events at people’s homes. To this day, I go into the kitchen, not just because I think you want to thank the people who made the food, but because I know my dad would be mad at me if I didn’t. Grace and kindness and service, humble devotion that is just a simple, small reminder that you’ve come so far, not by your own doing, but because of the blood, sweat, and tears of your ancestors.

So look, my dad lives in my head in a powerful way, because when you get to be a senator, people tend to open doors for you. And I used to call it being placated. You get plaques and awards for everything, but it’s not you. And we all have staffs of dozens and dozens of people who often will do the work that we take a claim for. But my dad said the measure of your worth will always be how you treat people when nobody else is looking.

Preet Bharara:

You tell the story. I mean, there are all these synergies in life. I’ve talked about them in the past, how you had Buddha, who inspired Thoreau and Thoreau who inspired Gandhi, then Gandhi who inspired another American, Martin Luther King. And you tell a story about a chain of events that’s not quite that, but it reminded me of it. So we go back many decades and a television network is airing Judgment at Nuremberg.

Cory Booker:

Yeah. Big event. Back when we had three channels.

Preet Bharara:

Three channels.

Cory Booker:

And people were skinnier back then, because you had to get up and walk to the TV to change those channels.

Preet Bharara:

I remember the first time we had a remote control, it was connected by a wire to the Zenith.

Cory Booker:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

The Zenith TV, which was the opposite of a flat screen. I think it was like the width of a football field.

Cory Booker:

Well, my very unscientific reason why our birth rate is going down is because back in my parents’ era, 11 o’clock, the TV just goes off. You had nothing but-

Preet Bharara:

The national anthem.

Cory Booker:

Yeah. And then national anthem, and then you had to figure out what to do with your time.

Preet Bharara:

So this film that is addressing one of the more horrific things in the scope of human history is airing, and it had to be interrupted with breaking news from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where in connection with the Civil Rights Movement, horrific beatings took place. So that’s event one, event two. And then somewhere in New Jersey, there was a lawyer who’s watching the program, as you describe, who decided, “I should do something more for my community and for my country. I should engage in service.” Like your father said about the worth of a person. And he did that and he became involved in fair housing issues. Pick up the story from there.

Cory Booker:

And so, he finds this young Black woman named Lee Porter who was the head of the New Jersey Fair Housing Law, who’s just frustrated. She doesn’t know what to do. And he and his creativity, only giving like an hour or so a week pro bono, but he decides we could expose this in New Jersey, how bad the segregation is here by sending Black couples in white neighborhoods and let them get turned away. And then we’ll send a white couple. They’ll find out that what the Black couple was told was a lie. The house is still for sale or what have you. And they got really good about it. They got articles written and embarrassment and exposure. ’68 comes and it now becomes the laws on their side, the fair housing law, federal fair housing law, but they were still fighting against a very segregated state at that point.

And they get this case file, he says, of this Black family moving up from the south, a man, a wife, and two year old and a little baby who had just been born like a month earlier, and they went to work and they sent them into a white neighborhood with great public schools. And the Black family actually fell in love with the house, but they were told the house was sold to somebody else. And when the white couple who followed them came in, the house was still for sales. The white couple put a bid on the house, a bid was accepted, papers drawn up. And on the day of the closing, the white couple did not show up. The Black man did and a lawyer, and they walked in to confront the real estate agent, and the real estate agent’s so angry. He’s violating federal law now, but still gets up and punches the lawyer in the face, sics a Doberman Pincher on the Black man, the father.

They fight their way out and they just start writing legal letters, starting to try to bring this to the public. The owners of the home are horrified. Mortified and embarrassed, and they sell the house to the Black family and the Black family moves in. And as I say in the book, 44 years later, that little baby who was just a few months old then in 1969 goes on to be America’s fourth Black person ever elected to the United States Senate, me.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s the punchline.

Cory Booker:

That’s the punchline. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And as you write, that story is my story. I’m that boy. All from, as you string together the chain of events, a particular movie airing on a particular night with breaking news that inspired one person in one state to do something, and look what that began.

Cory Booker:

But it’s even more than that. Remember, that Jimmy Lee Jackson, 26-year-old young man goes to try to save his mother’s life from a… She got shoved to the ground by a state trooper in Alabama. He rushes toward to dive in front of her and the officer draws, then kills him. The town is in mourning. They hold a funeral. King shows up, says, “This child shall not die in vain.”

And then, John Lewis, himself in the 20s, say, “We’re going to march right away for voting rights.”

Because that’s what his mother was trying to do, register to vote. So it’s the death of a 26-year-old that leads to a march of another 20-something year old leading people over a bridge named for a senator and a KKK Grand Wizard, that then is seen by somebody in New Jersey, who then gives an hour a week of pro bono work, who helps one family and that family goes on obviously to be my family.

So what most people don’t understand, we’re all connected. There is no person that’s an island onto themselves. What we do radiates. Meanness and cruelty radiates into the world, but so does kindness and decency. And you never know what that one kind act can do. In fact, Stanford has a researcher that was able to measure. This is just their ability to measure. I think it’s much further, but they found that one small act of it’s witnessing, if you and I are walking down the street and pick up a piece of trash that’s obviously not ours, we can affect the behavior. They were able measure people three degrees of separation. That’s how powerful acts of righteousness and justice are. And if we have that power every day, why aren’t we doing more good deeds, more gestures of kindness in a world so desperate for it?

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Cory Booker after this. So as a philosophical matter, you write that virtue is not an end of itself. Immanuel Kant, if we go back to college, would disagree with that and you quote him elsewhere, but apart from that quibble, and I believe this to an extent, “Virtues are practical,” you write.

Virtue is a strategy that wins elections, moves legislation, and shapes government priorities. Now, a skeptical listener or reader might say, “What virtue propelled Donald Trump to the presidency twice? What virtue propelled people to positions of great power in which they’re not only not kind, but cruel and predatory and all sorts of other awful things?”

Make the case, do the brief here for a moment on why virtue is a winning strategy, as opposed to something that we should practice theologically or morally.

Cory Booker:

I love it. And so, let me just first stipulate, and this is why I’m so proud that Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham, and Henry Louis Gates historians were willing to write blurbs for the book, because Jon Meacham said this to me bluntly, “Nothing we’re experiencing, he said is unprecedented. It’s all got precedent.” T.

His is not the first demagogue to rise in power, not the first time somebody’s used the tactics of Donald Trump is using to suppress, oppress. And so, I have seen in my life that the best way to take down the bully, to beat the hater, to overcome, not just in your own victory, but to change the world is not by doubling down on demeaning, degrading, divisive rhetoric and tactics. That may win a short-term victory, but you’re going to lose the nation or lose your soul. Practically, virtuous strategy, I cite dozens and dozens of stories from history, but my favorite is just going back to Alabama.

They did not beat Bull Connor. The great Taylor Branch wrote in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Parting the Waters. My favorite chapter perhaps of most any book is the one he calls The Children’s Miracle. King was failing in Birmingham. He writes the letters from the Birmingham Jail in April of ’63, comes out, can’t get people to organize. And these young activists, James Bevel, Dorothy Cotton, go up to him and say, “We’ve got a creative idea. Let children, kids march.”

And King had been against putting kids in danger, but desperate he agrees. And then they beat Bull Connor. First time in the modern Civil Right Movement, the jails were filled in any city, but they were filled with children. And the imagery in America and across the world, even in the Soviet Union of children being hit by fire hoses so shocked the conscience of our country, so called to the moral imagination of a nation that what was seen as invincible segregation fell within 12 days.

And so, I know people want to win elections, but remember this, the Democrats have routinely lost elections not because Republicans got more votes than us. Both times Donald Trump won, you saw dips in turnout, people less interested. It is almost as if the problem we’re fighting against, as King said, is not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. Too many Americans are surrendering to cynicism about our politics. We need more leaders at the local, state, national level who call to that moral imagination again. And that has to be at its core virtue.

Preet Bharara:

So I kept looking in the book for you to make a distinction between two kinds of virtue. Public virtue, to the extent there’s a distinction, and private virtue. When people think about virtue, often they think about a pious man or a pious woman, people who have good moral character in their personal lives. That’s not what you’re talking about here, right? Is it necessary for a leader to have personal virtue, to have these other 10 public and civic virtues by and large?

Cory Booker:

Well, I love Ben Franklin’s writing down a virtue of a quality in his journal, and he would try to focus on that one for the week. It’s an extraordinary story of a man who struggled with trying to be virtuous and not just be that in his public life. But yes, I am calling for civic virtue. I’m calling for a civic revival of the character traits that we celebrate in our civic space.

Preet Bharara:

So politicians can be forgiven or institutional leaders can be forgiven what they do in their private lives if they don’t hurt anyone. You can have vices, but public virtue is the most important thing. Is that fair?

Cory Booker:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But I guess what I’m looking for in this book is that, and that reason I started with agency and the story you’ve already told about how a guy who giving an hour or so pro bono work could set off a chain of events. It’s this understanding that we are the leaders we’ve been looking for. We are the heroes that this moment needs. And to think that we got to where we are today, because a bunch of senators on the Senate floor all put their hands in and said, “Hey, let’s say suffrage on three, one, two, three, suffrage.”

And that’s how we cut the women’s right to vote or the civil rights movement somehow hinged on a bunch of senators saying, “Let’s give those Negro people their right to vote.”

All of those things happen because of the civic virtue of Americans, ordinary Americans doing extraordinary acts of courage, decency, love, patriotism, the devotion of a people. Jon Meacham said to me before I started writing this book that America comes to crossroads after crossroads after crossroads. And what gets us by is not the leader in the White House, although they’re often huge and contributatory, but it’s always the virtue, always the soul, as he said, of the nation as a whole, that more of us than less actually decide to choose the right path at the fork of history. And we are at the fork of history right now.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask about a word that many people would think is a vice, not a virtue. And I wonder what you think of it, because you’ve used the word to describe yourself this time around. I believe anger, angry. I think you’ve said you’re a little angry these days. Is anger a virtue of vice, neither? Can it be both?

Cory Booker:

Anger is gasoline. It could be ignited and do horrible things, or it could be used as fuel to charge the engines of your actions. And so, I think your anger is good. It burns cleaner than gas. And for me, I’ve been motivated by that anger a lot. So I hope people are angry. I don’t understand if you’re not angry.

Preet Bharara:

So why are you angry and why are you angrier now than you might’ve been in 2016 or 2017?

Cory Booker:

Because of the grandeur of the damage that Donald Trump is doing. Let me tell you, one of the most horribly moving moments of my life was to stand, literally stand. I stepped over from in the border of Chad and Sudan, and I had never had aid workers. And I’ve visited refugee camps from Lebanon to Syria. I have seen human suffering, but nothing was like the vastness of human suffering I saw, because of what’s going on in Sudan right now. And I never had aid workers, these strong people who stand in the breach and save children, come to me, cling to my clothing and say to me, “You must do more.”

And go back and under Biden, get more done, get more support for those people saving the babies that I saw. And then Donald Trump comes along and completely eviscerates USAID, and takes thousands of Americans for pennies for every American out of some of the most horrible, horrifying human tragedies, out of the front lines of the fights against Ebola or treatment resistance tuberculosis, and forces them home. And now that same person or those people who stood and begged me to help them do more, come to my office and tell me that the thousands of people that will die, because of what this man has done.

And so, I have met with farmers. Most people, Americans don’t realize the number of farmers who are going bankrupt in this country, because of the actions of this president. I’ve met with small business people who their whole life was building the business up and then his chaotic tariffs tore down their businesses in a matter of weeks. I’ve seen families who’ve losing their healthcare have to make these awful decisions about which spouse is going to give up healthcare in order for their children to keep it. And so, if that doesn’t make you angry, I don’t know what can. I always say, if America hasn’t broken your heart, you don’t love her enough.

And so, I have gone a lot of weeks here in Washington feeling shattered, feeling angry, thinking very, very thoughtfully about how to use that energy and that passion. And it led me to the floor of the Senate for 25 hours, as we talked about earlier. It’s led me to travel the country and trying to shine a light on these for profit private prisons. And it’s made me take a hard look in the mirror about where I’ve fallen short and most definitely where the Democratic Party has fallen short.

Preet Bharara:

So that sounds to me, Senator, like you’re running again, are you?

Cory Booker:

Well, right now I’m running for reelection.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. That’s not what I meant.

Cory Booker:

Yeah. I know we are at this generational shift, as I said before, and I know this November election really will be defined by what we’re against. It’ll be a backlash against all the ways Donald Trump’s hurt Americans, and I think there’ll be a wave. I’m not taking that for granted. I’m going to work like hell between now and November, not just in my State.

Preet Bharara:

You think you get the Senate back?

Cory Booker:

I do. If we work for it, I think it’s within our grasp.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So then when will you decide if you’re running for president or not?

Cory Booker:

So I’ve already determined that I’m going to do everything I can in that ’28 cycle to try to influence the national conversation, whether I’m running for a president or not. I want this to be a generational moment. I want to be a part of a new generation of American leaders that changes the very way we think about our politics. I think that again, there’s a whole political industrial complex that benefits from trying to divide us by keeping the divide left, right, and it’s really not left, right. It is past, future.

Preet Bharara:

Democrats in particular, I think, talk about commonality, which is important and good. And so, we’re always trying to reduce human yearning to one element. What does everyone want? Do they want mobility? Do they want peace? Do they want dignity? Is it a combination of those things? Do they care about their self-interest? Are they also altruistic? And it turns out that some supporters form blocks and they support Trump no matter what. Notwithstanding his lack of virtue, notwithstanding his lack of vision. And I don’t think he demonstrates any of the 10 virtues that you set forth in the book. What is it that you think that people want, but more specifically, that the majority of people want so that you can be pragmatic about it and win an election?

Cory Booker:

The first thing that people want, fundamental, the floor, before we start talking about the higher order issues, is security, economic security, and safety. There is a fear in this country that my family won’t be safe. Hell, the number one killer of children is gun violence. There is a fear in this country that my kids can do everything right. And whether it’s the technology wave that’s coming with AI, robotics, quantum computing, or maybe it’s just the fact that, hey, the math doesn’t work anymore for an American family to be able to afford childcare and healthcare, to afford to pay my rent and buy prescription drugs. So the Democratic Party first has to just get the table stakes, which is what is your vision to take care of that? And then we can start talking about the higher order things that I think has defined America amongst all the nations in the world, which is I want to get back to that kind of aspiration.

And I know that kind of pride is there, as we saw in this most recent Olympics. I want people to believe in us again and our team, Team America, that we can manifest the right stuff in a globally competitive market, not to vanquish or beat other nations, but to lead them to a better horizon for the next generation of our species.

Preet Bharara:

Are you anti-billionaire?

Cory Booker:

I am rejecting that us versus them. I want you to invent something that cures diseases and I want you to make a lot of money. I just want you to pay your fair share of taxes. I just think that we have seen people now use their enormous privilege to rig our tax system. So you literally have the wealthiest people and the wealthiest corporations paying less of an effective tax rate than working class and middle class families. I’m going to undo that if I have any say in my future politics, it’s to create a system where work pays again. And it’s one of the reasons why just weeks ago I released a tax bill that just does that. It gets rid of all the tax avoidance schemes at the top and takes all of those savings, and says to the average working American, “You’re not going to pay any taxes on your first $75,000 of household earnings.”

That would actually massively buttress working class and middle class families in terms of the economic waves they’ve been facing. And it would actually do what we did for one year under President Biden, it would cut the child poverty rate in our country nearly in half.

Preet Bharara:

When you were out and about in your state, my home state, by the way, it’s the great state of New Jersey where my parents continue to be your constituents and proudly so. Did they ask you about democracy, about authoritarianism and about autocracy or only the “kitchen table issues?”

Cory Booker:

Much more the kitchen table issues, much more that. I mean, yes, I do hear a lot of people worried about are elections going to be secure in ’26 and ’28? I do hear people say the money that’s rigging politics, which is something I’m talking more and more about. But the biggest hurt I face in New Jersey up and down the state is that families are really scared, because they can’t make the numbers add up. They feel like they’re barely treading water and keeping their head above it, or they feel like they’re slowly sinking. We’re at a high of recent years in consumer debt right now. People are often carrying debt on three and four credit cards, just trying to make ends meet. So my state and the rest of the nation are hurting economically, and that’s the biggest urgency.

Preet Bharara:

There’s some more stories I want to ask you about. There’s one time when you were speaking, and you know what I’m talking about, because you write about it in the book as well. At the confirmation hearing of Ketanji Brown Jackson, and I don’t need to add to the encomium and the praise, but you began speaking, and I was in my basement office in my home in New York, and this is a few years ago now, so my boys were not in college yet. And I called them downstairs to have them listen to the rest of what you were saying. And I thought, and I’m not just pandering to the guest, I thought that was one of the most powerful series of sentences that I had heard from anyone in a very long time.

Cory Booker:

And I want to tell you, when I look at you, this is why I get emotional. I’m sorry, you’re a person that is so much more than your race and gender. You’re a Christian, you’re a mom, you’re an intellect, you love books, but for me, I’m sorry. It’s hard for me not to look at you and not see my mom, not to see my cousins, one of them who had to come here and sit behind you. She had to have your back. I see my ancestors and yours. Nobody’s going to steal the joy of that woman in the street or the calls that I’m getting or the texts. Nobody’s going to steal that joy. You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.

Preet Bharara:

What caused you to suspend your right to ask questions of the nominee and just say what was in your mind and in your heart, and what was the reaction?

Cory Booker:

So as you will remember, my expectation state was different, because she was such a magnificent nominee and human that a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle had told me that their meetings with her, just their expectations were blown away. They were very impressed with her. So I thought there was going to be a lot more care with somebody that regardless if you agree with their jurisprudence, it’s just a great American. But yet they, as I quoted in the book, even conservative critics of the conservative senators, that they were just trafficking in a filth that had never before been seen. And by the time it got to me, there was a dark energy in that room that felt suffocating. And here was this magnificent woman of dignity enduring it all and unflinchingly showing her strength and resolve, but I was hurting and angry that I had done this whiplash from feeling utter joy at the moment, to now feeling myself suffocated by the negativity in that room.

And so, I put away all my notes and I just spoke of our ancestors. I spoke of not just her qualifications, but the joy and the pride that was all around her, that was abundantly around her, maybe not evidenced in that room, but the people that were stopping me in the streets, the folks that work in the Senate that often don’t get anybody’s even notice, but want to grab you and tell you what it means to them that Ketanji Brown Jackson was sitting in that seat. And so, it was one of those times where you kind of lose yourself and you feel like you’re not speaking your own words, but you’re speaking the words, the chorus of a country and perhaps capturing some of the spirit of those who came before and made it possible for her to sit there.

Preet Bharara:

And some people came to you that you might’ve been surprised to hear from afterwards. You want to mention one or two of those?

Cory Booker:

Yeah. I have to say, I know from my side of the aisle, he gets a lot of heat, but the courageously cantankerous John Kennedy, who has partnered with me on some really important stuff, but I don’t even remember how… It just seemed like he was suddenly there. Somehow he crossed the entire room to shake my hand and tell me that he was really affected by what I said. And it was one of the better remarks he said he had heard. So that really touched me.

Preet Bharara:

So not to be churlish, but so I looked at your virtues and I agree with them. And there’s one quality that I’ve been thinking about for various reasons that if they were an 11th, I would commend you to think about and wonder what you think of it. And I think it’s a virtue, I don’t know if it’s a virtue or a particular attribute, that we could use in greater supply among our leaders and also our citizens, and that’s thoughtfulness, not in the sense of being considerate or giving a nice compliment, but in being reflective and deliberative, and not knee-jerk, and detaching yourself from your own position, empathizing with the other side’s position so you can refine your own position. And a lot of bad and evil can be avoided if we were just more thoughtful, we used our brains and thought more. Do you have a reaction to that analysis?

Cory Booker:

I mean, it is a virtue that I’ve struggled with, but I think it’s so important. And maybe I can say it in one way is to be impeccable with your word and to what comes out of your mouth really aligning with your integrity, but more than that, with the better angels of your nature. And it’s hard. I’ve let things slip that I wish I could grab and put back in my mouth. I have said things that I felt were too prideful and braggadocios, and I could hear the voice of my dad saying, “Don’t get too haughty, young man.”

Preet Bharara:

Are you going to tell us about the fight with Sharp James?

Cory Booker:

My lowest.

Preet Bharara:

I was going to leave that one alone.

Cory Booker:

I literally-

Preet Bharara:

You threw down with the mayor almost, right?

Cory Booker:

Yeah. I mean, it was talk about monumental stupidity and recklessness. It is actually exactly what people sometimes seem like they want you to match. I mean, Sharp was many things, but Trump could learn, in trying to be Trump, he could learn something from our former mayor who was a spectacle. If you ever want to watch an Oscar nominated documentary, 87 Minutes on YouTube, the movie Street Fight about my first sort of big election, and it lost in the Oscars to March of the damn Penguins, but it shows you Sharp in his full glory. And I was really in a struggling place myself. I had lost my election to him, and it was four years until the next one. And we basically, at a youth basketball tournament in the projects where we were doing that to show how you constructively deal with differences and bring people together. I mean, literally, it’s almost like starting a fistfight at a Nobel Peace Prize award. I mean, it is literally one of the biggest boneheaded things I’ve done and I wrote about-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, but you know what? Can I put a different gloss on it for a moment?

Cory Booker:

Please.

Preet Bharara:

It shows you’re a human being.

Cory Booker:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Like you’re just a guy. My wife knows this. I love myself some Barack Obama, but I like him a little less from years ago reading in the New York Times, that when he got hungry at night, he would pad down the stairs and have seven lightly salted almonds. You know what? Barack, you can kiss my ass. Because I’m eating the whole bag and then I’m getting some Doritos. It is nice to be a human… People are human beings and you get angry, and you try to be calm. So I like that fact about you, sir.

Cory Booker:

But you’re in good company about that pissing you off, because you know who first told me about that? Michelle Obama. She told me about the ridiculous discipline of her husband that-

Preet Bharara:

I think I have a new theory that I just thought of. Are you ready?

Cory Booker:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

President of the United States has access to Area 51, because only the president can, also had advanced access to GLP-1s. So I bet you fricking Obama had the earlier version of the drug that helped his appetite, because I don’t know how you do that job and have a six-pack, and seven lightly salted almonds.

Cory Booker:

Yeah, you and I-

Preet Bharara:

So every once in a while, Senator, if you need to throw down against a mayor who’s getting in your face-

Cory Booker:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

… don’t do it, but God bless.

Cory Booker:

Thank you, brother. Thank you. Thank you. The delicious imperfections of humanity. I appreciate you saying that.

Preet Bharara:

If you didn’t have them, you’d have to invent them. So I was telling my son, one of my sons, who’s 21, this past week that I was interviewing you, and I told him about your speech that we began the interview with. He was really interested in the biology. He’s a physics major, undergraduate, smart kid. He kept asking me questions about how you trained for the thing, and you write about it in the book.

Cory Booker:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

For people’s prurient interests, what was your eating and drinking schedule before the marathon speech on the Senate floor?

Cory Booker:

Yeah. So I approach everything mind, body, and spirit. And so, the body part, how do you conquer your necessity to go to the bathroom? But I knew fasting had to be part of it, so I didn’t eat for three days, but the peeing as a guy who now in my middle age, I get up once or twice in the middle of the night, how do you not go to the bathroom? And so, the only thing I could find was just not drinking for more than 24 hours beforehand. So I dehydrated myself, which had some tough consequences during the speech, but one of them wasn’t… I didn’t need to go to the bathroom. In fact, after the speech, my incredible emergency room doctor, cousin, and my then girlfriend, now wife, were like, “You’re not going to bed until you go to the bathroom, because if not, we mean it to take you to the doctor.” But I completely dehydrated myself, which meant I was cramping up and muscles-

Preet Bharara:

You forwent, I hate to say this to the United States Senator, but I must. You forwent the option of the diaper.

Cory Booker:

I considered the option of the diaper.

Preet Bharara:

You did indeed.

Cory Booker:

But I came to the conclusion that peeing on myself on national TV was not something that I could just pull off. I just realized that I would not be able to do that.

Preet Bharara:

That’s why you are a senator and I’m not. Cory Booker, thanks for your service, most importantly. Thanks for your time here. And the book, Stand. Really appreciate it, sir. Take care.

Cory Booker:

I want to say just in conclusion, thank you for being somebody I look out at the horizon who does every day stand up for the best of who we are as a country. And you’re just somebody I’ve long admired and I’m grateful for you.

Preet Bharara:

Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. In the bonus for insiders, I answer a listener question on Trump’s Florsheim shoe pressure campaign. Also, I address whether the FCC can legally strip TV broadcasters of their licenses for coverage it doesn’t like. To try out the membership, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. After the break, I’ll share a few words in honor of Robert Mueller, who passed away last week at age 81. I want to end the show this week with a few words about Robert Mueller, who sadly passed away this past weekend. Many of you know Robert Mueller most recently as special counsel, investigating the President of the United States. You may also know him as the long-serving FBI director, and many of us in the Justice Department also know him as a former high ranking official in Washington and the United States Attorney in multiple districts.

I got to know him when I first worked in the United States Senate, when we had oversight authority over the Department of Justice and the FBI. And as I talked about with Joyce Vance this week on the Insider podcast, I have literally never seen a more impressive witness before a panel of senators in my entire career. I also was then fortunate to have Robert Mueller as my colleague, as FBI director when I was a US attorney, and briefly, he was also my partner at my law firm, Wilmer Hale. The entire law enforcement community and the country at large owes him an incredible debt of thanks and gratitude. Before he took the special council position, I don’t think there’s anybody in recent history in law enforcement who did more to promote the rule of law, integrity and public safety in this country than Robert Mueller. As a measure of how broadly he was supported and respected, and in some quarters even revered, think about this for a moment.

The FBI director has a term of 10 years in modern history. Robert Mueller began his term right around the time of 9/11, and when his 10 years was up, guess what happened? There are 300 million some odd people in the United States. We had a Democratic president at the time and a Democratic Senate, and a Republican whose FBI term had just concluded. And Robert Mueller was so respected by Democrats and Republicans alike. Guess what they did? They passed a new law. They amended the statute for Bob Mueller for two years, and when he came up for confirmation to extend his 10-year term to a 12-year term effectively, he was voted in unanimously. Few people in law enforcement, few people in government for that matter, enjoy such widespread support, but Bob Mueller’s devotion to his country and to service began long before he entered the Justice Department.

Back in 2018, when he was in the midst of the special council investigation, Bob Mueller was listed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. And for whatever reason, they asked me to write a blurb about him. I haven’t looked at it in a number of years, but I did this past weekend after getting the sad news, and I think it holds up pretty well. Here’s what I wrote. Robert S. Mueller III doesn’t seek deferments. After a classmate died in Vietnam, this well-to-do Princeton athlete traded his lacrosse stick for a military rifle and volunteered for war. He returned with a bronze star, a Purple Heart, and a gunshot wound. He later brought the same gritty courage to battling crime at the Department of Justice. Eventually, he retired to private practice, but moved by violent sweeping Washington DC, Mueller quit his law firm to work in the trenches as a homicide prosecutor.

When his 10-year term as FBI director expired, a notoriously gridlocked Congress changed the law just for him. And once again, Mueller forfeited comfort for continued service. Mueller is straight laced and tight-lipped, a legal and sartorial traditionalist. Once while jointly announcing charges in an international assassination plot, he chided me for wearing a blue shirt. Mueller’s buttoned down discretion has made him an enigmatic vessel, into which polarized sides pour their hopes and fears. To millions, the special counsel is either a political savior or berserk villain. He is neither. He’s a by the book lawman, who with nothing to prove and a lifetime of service behind him, agreed to lead the most fraught, least understood, highest stakes investigation of our time. For that, we owe him incalculable thanks. Robert S. Mueller III, may he rest in peace.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Cory Booker. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. You can reach me on Twitter or BlueSky @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is now on Substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes and more. That’s staytuned.substack.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The supervising producer is Jake Kaplan. The lead editorial producer is Jennifer Indig. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández.

The audio and video producer is Nat Weiner. The senior audio producer is Matthew Billy, and the marketing manager is Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. Special thanks to Torrey Paquette and Adam Harris. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.