Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker continued to take Joe Biden to task for his recent comments commending his work with former Democratic Sens. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, who were open segregationists.
“I’ve said my peace,” Booker replied to Martha Raddatz on Sunday, when she broached the topic of Biden. “I have a lot of respect for Joe Biden and gratitude towards him, that’s even more of a responsibility that I have to be candid with him; to speak truth to power.”
Booker maintained that his contention was not with Biden’s willingness to work across the aisle. He said he rather took issue with the former vice president “evoking a terrible power dynamic that he showed a lack of understanding or insensitivity to by invoking this idea that he was called ‘son’ by white segregationists who — yeah, they see him, in him, their ‘son.'”
When Raddatz pushed back, saying that Biden claimed his comments were taken out of context, Booker said he “didn’t understand that,” and that he had spoken to many African Americans “who found the comments hurtful.” Booker conceded that “we all make mistakes,” but also claimed he didn’t “think the vice president should need this lesson.”
Booker himself faced criticism last week when he expressed willingness to meet with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whose comments praising Hitler and calling Jews “satanic” have led the Anti-Defamation League to label him as “virtually synonymous with anti-Semitism.”
