In a somewhat entertaining, if also infuriating, incident that occurred during a preliminary Senate confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Cory Booker started shouting and yelling at Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa over Committee Chairman Grassley’s attempt to push two nominations through the committee.
At issue in this case were the nominations of former Trump attorney Emil Bove to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Jeanine Pirro to the U.S. Attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., in which she is currently working in a temporary role and is cracking down on crime in the notoriously crime-ridden city. Sen. Booker freaked out during the vote and started yelling.
At issue was that Sen. Booker requested to debate Bove’s nomination to the Third Circuit, and Sen. Grassley shut him down, saying that the committee should just go ahead and vote on whether to report the nominee to the Senate floor. Sen. Booker, in response, started shouting at the chairman and claimed to be defending Senate norms and standards.
Beginning his shouting freakout, which lasted for multiple minutes, the senator who once described himself as “Spartacus,” raged and yelled, regarding Grassley’s decision to just proceed to a vote rather than have a tiresome debate, “I don’t understand this. What are you afraid of, about even debating this, putting things on the record, hearing from every senator?”
Continuing, Booker took the Lord’s name in vain while yelling about supposed obligations of the Judiciary Committee, snapping, “Dear God. That’s what our obligations are!” Then, ignoring his own recent history of launching a pointless, lengthy filibuster that did nothing besides annoy Republicans, Booker declared, “There’s no need to rush this.”
Still not done, Sen. Booker snapped that Grassley had to hold a vote on whether or not they would have a debate on the Bove nomination, saying, “You are obligated to address a point of order according to the rules of this committee. You can overrule me by a Senate vote. You’re violating your own rules.”
Booker also insisted that he and his fellow Democrat senators in the committee just wanted to air their grievances against Bove, snapping, “We’re simply asking for a credible amount of time to air our concerns before the vote.” He further claimed, “This undermines the basic decency of this committee.”
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Also during his rant, Sen. Booker insisted that Grassley was letting Trump attack the “decency” of the committee, saying, “Why are you doing this? What is Donald Trump saying to you that is making you do something which is violating the decorum of this committee, the rules of this committee, the decency?”
Adding to the chaos of the woke senator’s rant was that Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) started mumbling that the Judiciary Committee under Grassley “is a kangaroo court,” and then she and other Democrats in it stood up and stormed out of the hearing. Watch the incident here:
Commenters on X ridiculed Booker for his stunt. For example, one commenter on CSPAN’s post about the incident wrote, “Democrats have nothing but one PR stunt after another. No procedural rules were violated. The majority merely put an end to Democrat party grandstanding to delay the hearing.”
Other commenters on the same CSPAN post left messages like “I’m sure he had these same concerns when judges were being rushed through at the end of Biden‘s term? 🤔” and “The Democrats have destroyed, lied, or cheated everything they touch. Booker is side show politician.” Another said, “Spartacus is a joke. The entire Democrat party is a laughing stock.”
Similarly, Eric Daugherty posted a clip of the incident and said, “Utter and complete CHAOS in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats get up and WALK OUT as Cory Booker yells at Chuck Grassley. The Republicans on the committee were quickly approving Trump’s judicial nominee Emil Bove. They’re furious.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video