CNN "State Of The Union With Jake Tapper" - Transcript "Interview with Sen. Cory Booker"

Interview

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[10:30:00]

Joining me now in New Jersey, Democratic Senator Cory Booker.

Senator Booker, I would say good morning, but it's not a good morning.

Two shootings in less than 13 hours, 29 people killed, 42 people injured or wounded.

What was your reaction when you heard about the El Paso shooting, and then you wake up and hear about Dayton?

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: First of all, the horror of it.

Having been the mayor of a big city, you know the horrors of mass shootings and what it does. And so, first and foremost, obviously, your thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims, the families who have lost people, the people who now have months, years of recovery.

But you also know that thoughts and prayers are not enough.

And I turn my attention to the person who is leading this country, who is, in my opinion, in this moral moment, who is failing. And I think that, at the end of the day, especially because this was a white supremacist manifesto, that I want to say with more moral clarity that Donald Trump is responsible for this.

He's responsible because he is stoking fears and hatred and bigotry. He is responsible because he's failing to condemn white supremacy and see it as it is, which is responsible for such a significant amount of the terrorist attacks.

He's responsible because he is president of the United States, and has failed to do anything significant to stop the mass availability of weapons to people who intend to do harm.

And, lastly, he's responsible because leaders take responsibility. We are responsible for each other in this culture, in this society. And our president, in the highest moral position in the land, should be taking responsibility in this painful, difficult moment, and coming forward and telling us what he will do to address hate, to address white supremacy, to address the availability of guns, to address this mass violence.

His talking about the cowardice of others is more of a reflection of his failure to take responsibility and cowardice in a time that we need courageous leadership.

TAPPER: Now, the screed, the document that law enforcement is currently looking into about whether or not this terrorist, this white supremacist in El Paso, wrote it, he uses the language that we have heard from the president, in terms of calling migrants coming into this country an invasion -- it's in the second sentence of this manifesto or screed -- which is obviously something that President Trump has said.

But the shooter also said that he thought this way and had these beliefs before President Trump and that President Trump is not responsible.

I don't know how you make sense of any of this, but what did you think when you -- when you saw that?

BOOKER: Well, a mass murderer who's trafficking in hatred and bigotry all -- literally trying to give some kind of exculpatory evidence -- reaction to the president, I mean, come on.

Our president right now is using the same language of racism, of bigotry and white supremacy. The way this president is talking about immigrants, the way he's talking about minorities in this country, these are the words that are used by the kind of folks that are in the darkest corners of the Internet and, as we see in this terrorist attack, the kind of people that ultimately manifest that hatred and violence.

And for him not to take responsibility for that is a moral failing. And for him not to understand his failure to condemn it or see the seriousness, the majority of terrorist attacks since 9/11 have been right-wing extremists. The majority of those have been white supremacists.

And we have a president that not only is failing to call out white supremacy, who, in Charlottesville tried to create a savagely false equivalency, but he himself is using the language of hate on a regular basis to talk about congresspeople, to condemn urban places, to talk about immigrants.

He is responsible in his language. And he is fueling and giving license to this kind of hate in our country.

TAPPER: There's this theory, I think it's called stochastic terrorism, which is the idea of a leader using the mass media to demonize a particular group, whether it's Jews or immigrants or whomever, and then what appears to be lone wolf individual psychotics attacking that one group, where the individual attack is not predictable, but the general trend of it is predictable because of the amplification of the bigotry.

And it sounds like you are saying, not to be using -- you're not using the clinical term of stochastic terrorism, but it sounds like you are, in a way, holding President Trump responsible for some of these individual acts, whether it's the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting or El Paso.

BOOKER: Jake, I just want to continue to speak in this time with moral clarity.

We are a nation where we -- as a poet says, we are each other's bond. We are each other's magnitude. We belong to each other.

And we have a president of the United States who is savagely fraying the bonds of our nation by speaking consistently words of hatred, words of division, words of demonization and demagoguery. He is fueling a climate that is tearing at the fabric and fueling an environment where -- where white supremacists and people who have ill will are finding more and more license to strike out against the vulnerable, to strike out against the immigrant, to strike out against -- quote, unquote -- "the other."

This is a moral moment in our country, and our president is failing in his moral role to unite this nation, to heal, to bring about the best of humanity in America. And so he is responsible for what is going on and is doing nothing,

nothing to stop the carnage and the chaos, nothing in terms of gun legislation, nothing in terms of taking steps against white supremacy that we should take, nothing in terms of the kind of rhetoric that elevates, that brings together, that bonds.

Instead, he is ripping at our nation. He's tearing people down. He's tearing us apart.

This is a moral moment, and he is failing this nation. And what we saw in this last 24 hours, he must be held responsible.

TAPPER: Let's talk about the bold, ambitious, overreaching, depending on one's point of view, I suppose, gun control plan that you have said you would pursue as president.

As you know, the Senate has been reluctant to take up any gun legislation in the wake of mass shootings, including after 20 little children were killed at Sandy Hook, whether it's universal background checks or red flag laws.

What are you proposing that you think you could actually get through the Senate?

And I'm sorry to put it -- you're talking about morality, and I totally appreciate that on a morning like this. But there also is the -- there's morality and then there's what can get through the Senate.

BOOKER: Well, again, remember Strom Thurmond, longest filibuster in Senate history was to try to stop civil rights legislation.

But we were this nation that, when people died, whether it was the Shirtwaist Factory fire, we changed laws in the Senate in response to women throwing themselves out windows, dying -- to their death in those -- in those sweatshops.

We were a nation that overcame filibusters in the Senate when four girls were killed in a bombing. We responded.

And so now here we are in a moral moment again. And it's not four girls or the horrific deaths of women. This is mass shooting after mass shooting. Before we can even bury our dead, another one happens.

And so you want to know about a president that will take responsibility? Don't tell me what can't get done. The Senate is a -- replete with a history of things that could not pass, but then did.

What we need is a leader who is going to have a bold and ambitious plan.

And let me tell you, I make no bones about it. I challenge everyone in the Democratic primary race to have -- to join me on commonsense things like gun licensing.

If, in this country, you need a license to drive a car, you should need a license to buy and possess a firearm. States that have done that have seen dramatic drops in shootings.

And the problem is, right now, as we saw recently in Gilroy -- and Gavin Newsom spoke to this, the governor of California -- that we now have a reality where, because laws are actually getting strict in some states, the way these mass shooters get their weapons, go to the neighboring state with less laws.

We need to stop this patchwork of laws in our country that endangers people everywhere. We need to have a federal policy of gun licensing, of one handgun a month, of the kind of things I put out in my plan that are evidence-based, that will drive down shootings, will end this nightmare of the kind of carnage we're seeing.

And I challenge every Democrat to stand up in this moral moment and say that I will do what is necessary to protect folks.

And, by the way, we will -- how will I get that done? The same way we have gotten big things done all the time, is having leaders, number one, who are willing to stand up and put forth a bold vision, a dream of where this country should go, and then muster the moral majority, muster the majorities in Congress to get it done.

That's the kind of leader I will be.

TAPPER: Last question, sir.

And that is, the mass shootings shock us, and they horrify us, 20 people killed in El Paso, nine people killed in Dayton. But, as you know better than I, being the mayor of Newark, most gun deaths are not from mass shootings. Most gun deaths are not from semiautomatic weapons.

Most gun deaths, in terms of homicides, are from handguns. And they're individuals like the people that you invoke, the victims on the street in Newark.

How would your gun legislation prevent those, the ones that don't get the media attention because they're one-offs, they're incidents that take place in the inner city, and, frankly, because they're individual and because it takes place in high-crime areas, the media doesn't pay as much attention to it?

BOOKER: Well, Jake, that's why this is such a personal issue for me.

And this is why I feel so driven, because when mass shooting to mass shooting is as frequent as they're getting, where we barely even have a time to digest one in our -- in our gut, we see another one happen, but the reality is, in communities like mine, you see these happening with chilling frequency, every day in America, 100 people dying due to gun violence.

And, for me, having seen a child teenager bleed out, trying vainly to stop them from bleeding, seeing shrines on street corners with teddy bears and candles to children killed, going to the perversion of a funeral where parents are burying their children, this is what drives me on this issue and why I'm going to use every moment of this presidential campaign and, God willing, in my presidency to drive this point home.

We need full measures, full-throated commitment to deal with this uniquely American problem.

What Americans need to know is, this does not happen in any way, in any way, in other countries, unless they're in war, that we have had more people die in this nation in the last 50 years to this gun violence crisis than all of our wars combined, from the Revolutionary War to the wars in the Middle East.

This is a uniquely American problem. But I believe we can solve it with that unique American spirit that just says, enough. We are going to do the things we know that can protect our families and our communities and our houses of worship and our concerts and our malls.

We have to stop this before it visits upon your community. This is a time for moral courage. It is a time for a more courageous empathy. We need leaders that take responsibility.

TAPPER: All right, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, thanks for joining us on this -- this tough day.

Appreciate it, sir.

BOOKER: Thank you.

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