‘What in the Actual F*ck?!’ Cory Booker Confronted on AIPAC Cash in Explosive Interview
Left-leaning podcaster Jennifer Welch confronted Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) on the $800,000 he’d received from American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) after he boasted he was “one of a handful” of lawmakers not taking cash from corporate PACs.
Early in the interview on Tuesday, Booker sank into his chair in stunned silence as I’ve Had It podcast host torched him on his “heart-breaking” decision to back Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law, as U.S. ambassador to France amounted to “capitulation” to President Donald Trump.
Booker had deflected and appealed against the accusations, bemoaning Democratic tendencies to initiate a “circular firing squad” but only for the host to retort with: “Such bullsh*t.”
The exchange didn’t get any better when the top Democrat boasted he was “one of a handful of people that don’t take corporate PAC money.” Welch followed up to interrogate Booker on accepting roughly $800,000 in donations from AIPAC and slammed him for posing for a photo with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I’m one of a handful of people that don’t take corporate PAC money. I don’t understand my Democratic…” Booker began.
The host interrupted: “What about AIPAC money? You take AIPAC money, don’t you?”
He replied: “A minuscule percentage of my resources come from…”
“I read it’s like $800,000?” Welch cut in.
“Yeah, but that’s a lifetime number of raising tens of millions of dollars. Let me give you the right stat. The majority of my money comes from small-dollar contributions. By last report, I think 76% of it came from people that gave $25 or less. Again, we could pick at each other, or we could do what we need to be doing right now is joining in a chorus of conviction to condemn it,” the Democrat replied.
He added: “And again, I’m a child of civil rights activists. You think Malcolm X and Martin Luther King agreed on everything? No. But when it came to the fight, they joined together and created a movement that was successful. And that’s really my focus.”
He continued to argue that he was “the only person in the caucus that lives in a low-income black and brown neighborhood below the poverty line” before rounding on Welch’s AIPAC question: “When I go up and down in New Jersey, they don’t care about the fact that I took 1% of my money from some group. They care about, ‘What are you doing to restore my health care?'”
Welch, however, was not finished.
“I think the Democratic base feels like there is a disconnect. We hear you, like when you did your 25-hour speech, I was like, ‘Go, Cory, I love this. That is amazing.’ And then… There’s a photo shoot with you with Benjamin Netanyahu. And I was just like, what in the actual f*ck? Like, how can he do that? It was heartbreaking,” she shot back. “I felt betrayed!”
As Booker tried to interrupt, she told him to “hang on” and continued: “That doesn’t just happen in an echo chamber. Democrats like you were the base, we should make each other better. It’s not a purity test, we want credible messengers because when we are down the middle, beholden to corporate interests, we leave this vacuum. And that’s how fascism has flourished.”
“For myself and a lot of our listeners, when I saw the picture with Benjamin Netanyahu, I felt like it diminished your 25 hours. That’s how it felt to me,” she finished.
Later, when pressed on whether he considered Netanyahu a war criminal, Booker sidestepped, calling it a “loaded and hot” question designed as a “litmus test.” The hosts weren’t convinced.
Welch dismissed his objection, replying, “What happens to Democratic politicians is they go through this like, prism, and then we can’t ever get the answer to yes-or-no conversations.”
Watch above via YouTube.
