At a Senate hearing this morning, New Jersey senator Cory Booker erupted at Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, over President Trump’s recent controversial comments. According to several people present at an immigration-reform meeting at the White House last week, the president called the countries of Haiti and El Salvador “sh**hole” or “sh**house” countries, from which the U.S. should not accept immigrants.
The Democratic senator — who just joined the Senate Judiciary Committee this year – went on a tirade against Nielsen during the hearing, shouting at her for her supposed failure to understand or care about minority Americans who are concerned about bigotry and threats. “Your silence and your amnesia are complicity,” Booker told her.
“When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about this experience in that meeting,” Booker said. “And for you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues . . . when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because they’re worried about what happened in the White House. That’s unacceptable to me.”
Here is part of Booker’s rant, via CBS News:
“When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage,” Booker says. “And for you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss the questions of my colleagues … with tens of millions Americans hurting right now because they’re worried about what happened in the White House.” pic.twitter.com/0MS9t8WWM0
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 16, 2018