-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, as my colleagues are understandably greeting my colleague, I just wanted to take a moment and take the floor to express my deep admiration for a man that I have known for decades.

I first met Andy Kim when he was a college student and I was interviewing him for a Rhodes Scholarship. I was part of this panel of people who had to interview some of the best people from the State of New Jersey for this vaunted scholarship. I will tell you right now, when Andy Kim walked in that room, he blew away every one of the interviewers.

I like to brag around New Jersey now that while now hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have voted for Andy Kim, I was perhaps the first person to do so.

What I saw in a young college student decades ago has only blossomed so much more as he has gone from a young man to a U.S. Senator.

We throw around the word ``patriotism'' a lot, and it is often used in a way to brandish pride or, at its worst, as a way to condemn others. But the truth of patriotism was in the language we heard today; it is in the language of love, the fact that you cannot love your country unless you love your fellow country men and women.

I am excited that New Jersey has a Senator of unassailable brilliance, but what makes him special is not simply his extraordinary head but the profound depths of his heart.

New Jersey is a State that often I call the Rodney Dangerfield State where we get no respect, but the truth of the matter is, New Jersey has a representative that in this body that is known for partisanship, he is a person that is seen by colleagues on both sides of the aisle as someone that has a soul force, someone who has a heart, someone who is determined to be the kind of patriot this Nation needs.

I would be remiss in not mentioning this: I love the fact that we have this body that represents so many American traditions, so many streams of lived experiences that make this a great representation of our Nation. But the truth is, we are still seeing so many firsts in this body.

One first we should recognize is the one that Andy Kim exemplifies. He is the first Korean American to serve in this body at a time that Korean Americans have made contributions--from the academics, to the sciences, innovators, businesspeople, farmers. But this is the first time the United States of America has seen a Korean American, the son of immigrants, stand in this body. I will tell you this--not just because of his heritage, not just because of the uniqueness of his presence on this floor, but because of the depth of his humanity, his demonstration today of the urgency that we stand up and allow people to see our vulnerability, see our frailty. In fact, in many ways, Andy Kim has shown that often the greatest courage is found in the depths of our frailty, our vulnerability, and our candor and honesty with our own struggles.

I am a man of great physical stature relative to my smaller Senator, but I hope everybody in America knows this: I may have greater physical stature, but since I met him as a college student, I have looked up to my friend and my brother, a giant of a human, Andy Kim.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source