‘Your Silence and Your Amnesia Is Complicity’ Booker Charges
U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) exploded in anger over Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s refusal to remember the vulgar language used in the Oval Office by President Donald Trump last week when discussing immigrants from Haiti and African nations. Secretary Nielsen testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee for several hours on Tuesday, but told Democratic Senators she just couldn’t recall the president’s “tough language” – which happens to be the exact same phrase Trump used to describe his “shithole countries” remarks.
Senator Booker in a rare display of exasperation let loose on the DHS Secretary.
“The commander-in-chief in an Oval Office meeting referring to people from African nations and Haitians with the most vile and vulgar language. That language festers,” Senator Booker warned. “When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power, it is a dangerous force in our country. Your silence and your amnesia is complicity.”
CNN notes that Senator Booker went on to cite “a recent Government Accountability Office report found that 73% of violent incidents since September 11, 2001, were the result of white supremacy and right-wing violent extremists.”
Booker went on to suggest that 73 percent of the DHS Secretary’s time should be spent on white supremacist hate groups.
“The fact pattern is clear of the threat in this country,” Booker said. “I hurt. When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage in my eyes … and for you not to feel that hurt and that pain, and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues, saying, ‘I’ve already answered that line of questioning,’ when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now, because of what they’re worried about what happened in the White House, that’s unacceptable to me.”
Booker went on to talk about the death threats he and other Senators receive, and continued to blast Nielsen for refusing to remember what Trump said in the Oval Office.
“I find that unacceptable,” he repeated.
“This is very personal to me,” Sen. Booker also told Secretary Nielsen. “I sit here right now because when good white people in this country heard bigotry or hatred, they stood up.”
CNN notes Sen. Booker was “quoting Martin Luther King Jr. on the ills of bystanders remaining silent.”
“Why am I frankly seething with anger?” Booker continued. “We have this incredible nation where we are taught it doesn’t matter where you are from, your race, your color, your religion, it is about the content of your character.”
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