MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript Interview with Cory Booker

Interview

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Here with me now, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey who has been

outspoken on the need for police reform, who sponsored a bill that actually

would change qualified immunity for police.

Senator, let`s start first with the fact this is happening, which is just

striking to me. Mitch McConnell is saying they`re going to actually have a

vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate on a bill which is not sort of the

thing they do unless there`s some crisis where some, you know, agency of

the government that needs to be funded. What`s going on here?

SEN. CORY BOOKER, (D) NEW JERSEY: Well, I think that what is happening in

the communities across this country, all 50 states, from suburban towns to

big cities, and about a dozen plus countries around the world, there are

people demanding change. And that voice, those voices cannot be ignored.

And so the bill that I did, which is with Kamala Harris and the

Congressional Black Caucus and other leaders is, I tell you, it is real

reform, it has real consequence for police officers.

What I fear is what the Republicans are trying to do right now, is to

defuse all of this energy by putting up bills and the president`s executive

order that is heavy on symbols but very, very light on substance. It offers

no real teeth or accountability to make real, substantive change, which is

what people are demanding.

HAYES: You know, it`s interesting you say that, because I have seen

activists and organizers and people I think whose politics are at the sort

of left edge of the Democratic coalition, I think more radical than folks

that might be in elected offices, and they said the same thing about

Democrats. They basically say Democrats are offering these reforms to kind

of get people out of the streets and sort of give them something to go home

and go out of the way, and then -- so they can essentially preserve the

status quo, more or less. What do you say to that?

BOOKER: Well, I would love to take a moment and speak to the people that

are protesting. Please keep at it. Please stay out there. You`re changing

the world. And it`s the only way from civil rights legislation, suffrage

legislation, Americans With Disability Act, rights to protect LGBTQ

Americans, all of them have come through popular, persistent protests.

And right now we`ve only got about less than 40 senators on a bill that

actually has the eight pillars that a lot of our civil rights organizations

have been asking for. And the only way we get big bills passed that really

are cultural changing bills, the workers` rights we take for granted, for

example, is from

continued, sustained, determined protests.

So I just hope folks will continue to do it, they`ll disturbed -- hope to

continue to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed and challenge

the moral imagination of this country.

HAYES: You were a juror in the president`s impeachment hearing, the

impeachment trial, which happened just this year, just a few months ago, in

another lifetime. And like other members of the United States Senate and

the Democratic caucus, wanted to try to get John Bolton called to testify.

You tried several votes to make that happen.

I`m curious if you have a response to watching him secure a $10 million

book deal, withhold this evidence from the trial that you were part of, and

now put it in a book.

BOOKER: I think this is going to be a sad chapter in American history,

where you see a lot of folks who have kept silent in the face of things

that were not only wrong morally, but frankly violative of our

constitution. And when they had a chance to speak out, when they had a

chance to speak up, they didn`t say anything.

And when Bolton could have made a difference is during an impeachment

trial. The things that he`s alleging in that book are impeachable offenses,

are contrary to the common values and the ideals of this country. And for

him not to speak up in a manner of patriotism, but instead, it seems, only

to get paid, is just painful.

But he`s not alone. There are a lot of people who have chosen to remain

silent out of convenience or fear or what have you in the face of a

president that, as General Mattis, who is finally speaking up, has said is

a danger to our democracy.

HAYES: Yeah, I mean, there is a theme here, which is that the people that

do say something all seem to essentially confirm what we all see every day

in front of our faces on Twitter and in the White House.

BOOKER: Look, I just -- it really is hard for me, when there`s so much at

stake, when, as a guy on the Foreign Relations Committee, where I see the

things that Bolton is alleging, you know, the challenge in China with the

concentration camps against Muslim citizens of their own country. This is

real human rights issues. These are real violations, when a president was

willing to sell his country out for reelection, and now it seems like it

wasn`t just Ukraine but the alleged conversations he had with China are a

violation of his oath of office.

And so I just, in this time where protesters are forcing many of us to

reexamine some of the best writing in American history, I`m thinking of

Martin Luther King, who really wrote a "Letter from the Birmingham Jail,"

not to the white supremacists and KKK members, he wrote that letter to

white moderates who he said he had more of a problem with, not the people

actually doing the dastardly deeds, but the people that are silent,

complicit, that are empowering that in and of itself.

And so this is a Republican Party, there are good people on both sides of

the aisle in America, we demonize each other way too much, but this is a

man that is now changing the Republican Party forever, putting a stain upon

it, that this party is allowing itself to be dragged down because it`s

refusing to -- in fact the quotes of some of these folks, before Donald

Trump was elected are powerful. In fact, I heard Lindsey Graham`s words

being used in a Republicans against Trump ad, because they`re so damning.

And so now this is…

HAYES: They were right.

BOOKER: …so many.

HAYES: Yeah, they were right before they had to be wrong. Senator Cory

Booker, thank you, as always, for making time, senator.

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