Tucker: Cory Booker invented his own identity
Fox News host gives his take on the the confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
We're trying to find things to be happy about and actually, if you look hard enough, there are a lot of them. One of the best things about, say, a Supreme Court confirmation hearing is that you get to see the U.S. Senate in action and this is new. If you're like most people, you know, the Senate has 100 members or two from every state, and you know that they're somehow important. They're in the Constitution. So, they wear dark suits and red ties to work. They talk about laws. Every summer, they fly to foreign countries and act like they're president. Some of them you may even know by name—the famous ones like Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, obviously, the publicity addicts like Lindsey Graham and of course, the ones you see on your own ballot every six years.
So, that's what you know. But do you really know these people? Who are they, really? What are they like? Well, unless you happen to live next door to one or you watch an inordinate amount of C-SPAN, it's hard to know what they're like and that's why confirmation hearings are so great. You get to see U.S. senators in their natural habitat. It turns out there are confirmation hearings underway right now, you may have heard about them, for a Biden appointee called Ketanji Jackson. Jackson is a world-renowned legal genius who, for reasons that are still not clear, cannot determine what a woman is. We told you about her last night. But so far, the star of these hearings has not been Ketanji Jackson. It's been a junior senator from New Jersey called Cory Booker.
Now, like Ketanji Jackson, Cory Booker is also a world-famous legal scholar, hence his seat on the Judiciary Committee. Booker attended not only Stanford and Yale Law School, but then went all the way to Oxford University in England on the coveted Rhodes Scholarship. He has quite a resume. If academic credentials still had any connection to ability or achievement, Cory Booker would be a very impressive person, but in his case, we're going to have to grade on a curve because Cory Booker has come a long way.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) listens as U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, March 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Cory Booker is from a world you have never been to. He's from a hard, unforgiving world of crime, decay and raw urban authenticity. Cory Booker is from the streets of Newark. He once described his world in an interview, "I still remember my first month on the street," he said. "I walked up to this charismatic Black guy my age called T-Bone, who was one of the drug lords. I said, 'Yo, man, what's up?' And he leaped up and for me, looked me right in the eye and said, 'Who the blank do you think you are? If you ever so much as, look at me again, I'm going to put a cap in your a--."
Now, T-Bone, as you probably concluded, was one of Newark's most notorious drug lords. As Joe Biden might have said, he was a bad dude. But Cory Booker is a bad dude too in his own way and the two became close. The Rhodes Scholar and the crack slinger, united by a common love of the street. But then inevitably, tragedy struck. Cory Booker learned that T-Bone was on the lam from the law. By this point. Cory Booker was the mayor of Newark, so the friendship couldn't last. As Booker later recalled with sadness, "that rift between me and T-Bone was inches. We sat there, but I felt so alienated that there was a gulf is why is the Grand Canyon between us and I could not reach out to save this young man, and we drove back to a housing project called Brick Towers, and I've never seen him again since that day."
It's a poignant story, but Cory Booker isn't alone. No one has seen T-Bone since that day. In fact, no one has ever seen T-Bone at any point ever because T-Bone doesn't exist. As we later learned, T-Bone is a fictional character. Cory Booker made him up entirely, but Cory Booker didn't stop there. He also invented his own identity.
It turns out that Cory Booker is not a product of the streets of Newark, not even close. He is, in fact, a blue-eyed rich kid from an all-White suburb. His parents were IBM executives. Now you can judge, but you have to concede that whatever else he is, Cory Booker is a remarkable actor. He is the Jussie Smollett of Democratic politics. A fraud? Yes, but a deeply committed one, a man who has honed his skills and those skills have been on full display this week as Booker has imploded all over Ketanji Jackson. Now Jackson is an oppressed member of the professional class too. She went to Harvard and Harvard Law School. So, the two of them have a lot in common. Watch their solidarity.
CORY BOOKER: Your family and you speak to service, service, service and I'm telling you right now I'm not letting anybody in the Senate steal my joy. I told you this at the beginning... I'm embarrassed. It happened earlier today. I just look at you and I start getting full of emotion. … You didn't get here because of some dark money groups. You got here how every Black woman in America who's gotten anywhere has done, by being like Ginger Rogers said, "I did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards in heels." … They're going to accuse you of this and that. Heck, in honor of your person who shares your birthday, you might be called the communist, but don't worry, my sister, don't worry. God has got you.
Did we make that up? Do we create that? That actually happened in the United States. " Service, Service, Service." That's what we call hard edge striving, though. "It's service," but the best was at the end, "Don't worry my sister." Wait a second. They're related? Well, apparently they are, at least in some hard-to-define spiritual sense. They have definitely seen each other at Whole Foods or on the flight to Edgartown.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court nominee for U.S. President Joe Biden, departs a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (Photographer: Julia Nikhinson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
For decades, these two pioneers have followed virtually identical paths. Both grew up in white-collar families. Both went to multiple elite schools. Neither one has ever left the tiny world of credential mongering NPR listeners who run this country. Now, it's been a struggle for both of them, but they've made it. At this point, they're just sick and tired of being sick and tired. Cory Booker chokes up thinking about the journey.
CORY BOOKER: I was in the White House with my Democratic colleagues, and I'm again, I'm in my joy. I can't help it and the president's asking our advice, "Who should we nominate?" Or whatever, and I look at Kamala and we have a knowing glance, which we've had for years when she and I used to sit on this, end of this committee, at times. And then I try to get out to the president what it means, what it means, and I want to tell you when I look at you, this is why I get emotional. … It's hard for me not to look at you and not see my mom, not to see my, my cousins, one of them who had to come here and sit behind you. She had to be, she had to have your back. I see my ancestors and yours. Nobody's going to steal the joy of that woman in the street or the calls that I'm getting or the texts. Nobody's going to steal that joy. You have earned this spot. You are worthy. … Today, you're my star. You are my harbinger of hope.
That's not Jussie Smollett? Did you see the footage from the sentencing? That's not Jussie Smollett? It's exactly Jussie Smollett. Now you could say, "I'm offended by it," but you can also acknowledge that's art. The best part is that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris share a knowing glance, as they have for years. It's the mutual recognition of the totally fraudulent. A faker knows a faker. "Oh, you're pretending to be someone, you're not? Me too."
It's easy to enjoy all this. Imagine if you worked at, say, CNN or MSNBC or NBC News, and you had to pretend that that was an authentic scene that meant something, that was rooted in some observable physical reality that people who went to Ivy league schools somehow are oppressed. Huh. So, you wouldn't want to acknowledge any of that. You would want to point out that rather than ask a single actual question during the confirmation hearings, Cory Booker just slobbered all over the nominee. You wouldn't be able to say any of that. So, you'd have to figure out a way to ignore it and...our media dutifully did.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Cory Booker had no questions, really. He just offered an extraordinary, extemporaneous set of remarks.
BRIANNA KEILAR: That moment has kind of ruled the day after what was really Republicans hijacking so much of this hearing.
DANIELLE HOLLEY-WALKER, HOWARD UNIVERSITY: What we saw Senator Padilla and Senator Booker do to affirm her is something that is deeply touching in a way because we know how deeply disrespected Black women can be.
MAYA WILEY: It's bringing tears to my eyes right now, brought tears to my eyes yesterday. You know what Senator Booker said was the God's honest truth.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: There are a lot of Black women who watched Cory Booker and said, "This is someone who came to really give her the sort of flowers that she deserved."
You should know that not one of the people you just saw is a poor person. Not one of them is oppressed. Not one of them has anything at all in common with the people they claim to speak for. So, they are to a person every bit as fraudulent as the people on stage, telling you from the peak of the fake meritocracy that they're somehow fighting against the current. Of course, the opposite is true, but you're not allowed to say it, but imagine the reserve of energy it takes as a newsman to pretend, having shown the clips that we just did, that that was anything but horrifying, anything but so fake that the hair on the back of your neck goes up at the fraudulence.
That's honestly like telling you that, Lia Thomas is it deeply accomplished female swimmer who's winning because she just practiced harder than the other girls. A lot of the Black women who watched that loved it, said one NBC journalist—a person who can't define what a woman is. The problem with all this is easy to make fun of, but the problem is they are praising a sitting United States senator (Remember the Judiciary Committee) for asking zero questions during a confirmation hearing, during which we're choosing the next Supreme Court justice.
They're saying it is immoral because of the way that she looks, to ask her real questions, to know what we're getting before she takes the seat for life and of course, this was the whole point. It's the Greta Thunberg play. You throw someone up there who represents your views, who can't be questioned because anyone who questions the person is, of course, mean or racist or sexist or whatever. You know, pick your attack, but the person is immune from sincere questions.
That's foretelling and yet somehow it gets even more nauseating. The Washington Post Editorial Board saw that groveling and decided it didn't go far enough, so they published this headline yesterday, "Republicans boast they have not pulled a Kavanaugh. In fact, they've treated Jackson worse." So, if you read The Post piece, and you shouldn't, obviously Jeff Bezos' newspaper is utter garbage. You will find that The Post Editorial Board is aghast that Republicans ask Ketanji Jackson about kiddy porn, about the sentences she handed down, sentences that fell far beneath federal sentencing guidelines. Ketanji Brown's explanation for her low sentences with the guidelines were written before the internet. Now, that people can amass huge amounts of kiddy porn, the guidelines are too strict. That was honestly her explanation. Maybe you agree with that. Maybe you don't. Tell us the legal principle behind that, if you would, judge.
MCCONNELL SAYS HE WILL OPPOSE JACKSON’S NOMINATION TO THE SUPREME COURT
Yet even if you agree that because the internet makes acquiring kiddy porn easier, we shouldn't be as tough on kiddy porn. Even if you think that's a fair standard, it's certainly fair to ask about it in a Supreme Court hearing, no? For comparison's sake, and we didn't want to go here, it's just too obvious, but we can't control ourselves. This is how the emotive, weepy Cory Booker treated the last nominee to the Supreme Court, someone whose politics he doesn't agree with. He told us at the time that Brett Kavanaugh was so odious, so morally filthy, so satanic that anyone who could vote for his nomination was guilty of a mortal sin.
CORY BOOKER: In a moral moment, there is no bystanders. You are either complicit in the evil, you are either contributing to the wrong or you are fighting against.
And the fake priestess in the fake clerical collar nods. It's just so funny. If you were to take a survey of the people most likely to give you a moral lecture about your own moral shortcomings, they would be the people whose personal lives could withstand the lightest scrutiny, if you know what we mean. That is a very consistent standard. Anyway, no one has used language like that to describe opponents of Ketanji Jackson, even though she let, to restate, industrial scale pedophiles out of jail with three-month jail sentences. Nor has anyone subjected her to questions about her high school drinking habits. Remember that? Hate to bring it up, but here's what it looked like.
CORY BOOKER: Judge Kavanaugh, you drank on weekdays as well in high school, not just weekends.
BRETT KAVANAUGH: On weekdays?
CORY BOOKER: Yes, sir.
BRETT KAVANAUGH: I'd say that's rare. Are you talking about during the school year?
CORY BOOKER: I'm talking about the calendars that you provided during these dates.
BRETT KAVANAUGH: That's in the summer after a football workout when we went over to...
CORY BOOKER: You drank on weekdays. Yes or no, sir?
BRETT KAVANAUGH: In the summer, when we went over to Timmy's house on July 1st, that would indicate yes.
CORY BOOKER: Yes. In other words, that that July 1st reference to skis, "went over for skis," that's brewskis, correct?
BRETT KAVANAUGH: And after Tobin's...
CORY BOOKER: Sir, sir, I just need a yes or no. That brewskis, right?
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Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh stands during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on April 23. (Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)
That's the guy lecturing you about God. And like all phony people, you see a little glimpse of cruelty and meanness beneath. "Did you have a beer? Answer the question." And what's funny is that Brett Kavanaugh actually had to answer the question, not that it mattered in the end. It wouldn't matter what he said.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, meanwhile, still is not explain what the meaning of the word woman is. Are women even real? Turns out that question is now above the pay grade of the U.S. Supreme Court. Maybe we're meant to think of women as an archetype, a pastiche. Maybe they're like T-Bone, the baddest drug lord in Newark. One minute women are here, fully female and authentic filling you in the gritty details of womanhood. The next thing you know, you drop them off at a housing project and they're gone forever.
This article was adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the March 24 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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