Booker calls Trump a ‘bully’ after attacks against Harris

(CNN)Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker on Sunday called President Donald Trump a “bully in the playground that is about to get knocked out” over his attacks against presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Trump on Thursday promoted a conspiracy theory about whether the California senator, who is Black and South Asian American, is eligible to serve as vice president and president. Last week, he also called her “nasty,” “the meanest,” and “a mad woman,” playing into racist and sexist stereotypes of Black women.
“This is something I think that many Americans know, I know for my family, is when you have African American women who are rising up in positions that there have never been African American women in before that people are going to viciously attack them on gender and race,” Booker told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
The former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate also said the attacks from Trump about his colleague and friend reflects the President’s “demeaning and degrading” language he has used about Black Americans in the past, calling it not surprising.
“What I don’t think Trump understands is that Kamala Harris has been fighting this fight her entire career rising to positions where she was the first African American woman in time and time again,” he said. “So if there’s anybody that’s ready for this kind of mess, it’s Kamala Harris. And so Donald Trump can pick a fight if he wants. But he is the proverbial bully in the playground that is about to get knocked out when he steps up against this dynamic duo that will beat him in November.” Booker was referring to the presumptive Joe Biden-Harris Democratic ticket for the November election.
Harris, 55, made history Tuesday when she was chosen as Biden’s running mate, becoming the first Black and South Asian woman to appear on a presidential ticket, but this wasn’t the first time the she broke a glass ceiling. In California, Harris was the first woman, and first Black woman, to serve as the state’s top law enforcement official. She was the first Black woman from California to serve in the US Senate, and second from any state, after Illinois’ Carol Moseley Braun.
The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, Harris was born in Oakland, California, making her eligible to be vice president.
Trump on Thursday would not definitively say whether Harris met the requirements to serve as president or vice president, saying he heard on “social media” that Harris could be ineligible. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said in a separate interview with Tapper on Sunday that he accepts the fact that Harris is eligible to serve as vice president and president.
On Saturday during a news conference from his Bedminster golf clun in New Jersey, Trump said he would not be “pursuing” questions about Harris’ eligibility, but did not dismiss the conspiracy theories as false.
Harris responded to Trump’s attacks earlier Sunday, saying she expects the Trump campaign to “engage in dirty tactics,” but she is ready for it.
“They’re going to engage in an attempt to distract from the real issues that are impacting the American people. And I expect that they will engage in dirty tactics. And this is going to be a knockdown, drag-out. And we’re ready,” Harris told TheGrio in an interview, when asked how Trump promoting birther conspiracies signals the tactics his campaign will use.
Booker also on Sunday defended Harris’s criminal justice record during her time as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general that has been criticized by activists.
“There are always going to be critics, but let the work that she’s done speak for her,” Booker told Tapper, mentioning he and Harris’ collaboration on bills such as the Justice in Policing Act. “As a guy that has been in the trenches with her on every major issue relating to everything from policing to reentry, she has been one of the great voices in the Senate, helping us to gain ground and move ahead.”
CNN’s Jasmine Wright and Gregory Krieg contributed to this report.read more