The Republican National Committee on Wednesday said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., got away with “mansplaining” to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during a Tuesday hearing, in a way that would have prompted attacks from Democrats if Booker were a Republican and Nielsen were a Democrat.
“Picture it,” RNC rapid response director Michael Ahrens wrote in a blog post. “A male Republican senator spends his entire 10 minutes ‘mansplaining’ the female DHS secretary about immigration policy, throws around the term ‘conscientious stupidity,’ yells at her the only time she tries to speak, and concludes his diatribe without even asking her to respond.”
“There’d be so many triggered Democrats that there’d be a hashtag within minutes, campus protests across the country, and the topic-du-jour for celebrities at Hollywood’s next award show,” he added.
Booker blew up at Nielsen after she said she never heard President Trump say some countries in Africa and elsewhere are “shithole” countries. Booker and other Democrats have said Trump’s remarks was racist, and said he cried “tears of rage” after hearing about the comment.
Booker accused Nielsen of covering up for Trump at the hearing.
“When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power, it’s a dangerous force in our country. Your silence and your amnesia is complicity,” Booker said.
But Booker’s rant also led to criticism from Republicans, who accused him of grandstanding and even bad acting. The RNC said Booker got away with it because Democrats don’t attack Democrats when they are “mansplaining.”
“[B]ecause the party affiliations were reversed, Derogatory Cory got nothing but praise from the selectively-outraged base he was clearly performing for yesterday,” Ahrens wrote. “Nevertheless, she persisted.”
