Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., was confronted Sunday with a clip of himself from 2016 declaring, “I love Donald Trump” while he was running for president, as NBC’s Kristen Welker asked the senator if he still loved the president.
“You have run for president before in 2020 on a message of love. It’s the same message you had back in 2016. I want to play you a little bit of something that you had to say back in 2016,” Welker said.
In the clip, Booker said, “I love Donald Trump. I’m going to say that. I don’t want to answer his hate with hate. I’m not going to answer his darkness with darkness. I love him.”
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Welker asked, “Do you still love Donald Trump?”
“I’m a Christian, and my faith is very clear: Love your enemies, love your adversaries. Never let someone pull you so low as to hate them. That doesn’t mean I won’t fight him with ferocity to try to defend and protect people’s healthcare and public education,” he responded.
Booker went on to quote the Declaration of Independence.
“God bless America,” he said. “Our Declaration of Independence ends with those profound words: If we’re going to succeed as a nation, we must, quote, ‘mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.’ He may be abandoning that ideal of sacred honor, but we need a return to it—an urgency to return to it in our country.”
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Booker said hate was tearing America apart and argued that Americans didn’t want leaders who
“So, yes, I will not hate my adversaries in Congress,” the congressman said. “I’ll be doing a better and better job, I hope, of reaching out to people, pulling them together, and reminding them that in this American moment, the definition of our success ultimately will come down to: ‘Are we able to put more indivisible into this one nation under God?'”
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The Democratic senator was also asked about whether he was planning to run for president in 2028.
“I am definitely not ruling it out. I’m running for re-election; I hope New Jersey will support me for another six years,” he said.
In February, the senator said he hadn’t “dismissed” a possible presidential run.
