🚨 Cory Booker grabs NATIONAL HEADLINES

All right. Thank you so much for joining me. It's good to be back with you. So we are in the era of big swings, of fighting, of figuring out how to break through and get some attention in this media environment. You did exactly that again. What were you hoping to accomplish by your 12-hour sit-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol? Well, again, it's trying to have a conversation with people and let them know, number one, I've heard you do things different, take risks, try things. And so this was something very unorthodox in the Senate and the House with Hakeem Jeffries. But really it was to have a conversation, again, center stories of people who are going to be deeply affected. And some of those compelling speakers left yesterday were like the incredible little lobbyists who were some of the heroes in the 2017 fight for the Affordable Care Act. But to see these parents sharing their stories about their children who were there, beautiful, challenged with disabilities, but living sort of vibrant lives because of Medicaid, it's a great thing to be able to show that. We had people come and talk about the impact it's going to have on food programs and some of the people that are doing the work to feed the hungry. So elevating those voices was the second thing we were trying to do. And then activating people. It comes down to how many of us are willing to do something out of the norm in our own lives. Abnormal times demand abnormal actions. And really it was a call to action. Get more people involved. Talk to us about where things stand right now in terms of Republicans' efforts to dismantle Medicaid. Where does it stand? Where is the bill as it stands right now? The budget as it stands right now? So this is the drama right now. We have coming back from a two week break, this work period, the Speaker of the House has said, I want to get this done in this work period. And that means between now and Memorial Day, they're going to try to push this bill through. And again, they already told the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, that you have to get $880 billion. Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that means you're going to have to take it from Medicaid. So this is the moment. Now here's how people are working, and this excites me, is there has been so much public pushback. A lot of Republicans that are in purple districts and purple states are saying, oh, I'm not going to really cut Medicaid. They're already starting to equivocate on whether they are going to support a bill that has savage cuts. And so what are they saying that they're going to cut? What are they trying to justify their cuts as? I mean, this is the, honestly, this is the way that they are going to try to play games. They're going to try to call it not a Medicaid cut, but in some ways undermine it, like with so-called work requirements, which is a great way to say, oh, yeah, of course people should work if they want their health care. But isn't the whole point that the folks who benefit from Medicaid are people who are disabled? There's children, there's seniors. Well, that's the point. But the other point that they're trying to do is that if we create more bureaucracy, more paperwork for you to fill out, more challenges, they actually could quantify how many people just won't go through all of that and will land without coverage. This is a way for the people that are talking about deregulation, this is a way to create more red tape and regulation around Medicaid that makes people who are already strapped on time, already have children to take care of, just put more of a burden on them, which will mean that less will really be pulling and relying on the program. So what do they, what do they expect? What do you expect will be the consequence if Republicans are able to be successful with what they're looking to do right now? So we want to make it clear, the Republicans who vote on this are endangering their positions. Simple as that. We want them to fear the people more than they fear the president. We want them to be more afraid to undermine their hospitals in their districts, undermine the care for the people in their districts, undermine healthcare, because Medicaid is connected in so many ways to the delivery of healthcare. We want them to be more worried about that than they are about the consequences for going against the president. Most of these people were around back in 2017 and 2018. They saw firsthand the consequences of going after the ACA, of attacking people's healthcare. That led to the biggest victory in the House in modern American history. Democrats flipped 41 seats in the House as a result of going after the ACA. And so are their memories that short? Is their fear of Donald Trump just that overpowering? What are we looking at here? How do they not see this and learn from some history? Again, why they would even put a bill like this up makes no sense to me. It violates all of our collective values, cutting food from the hungry, healthcare from the sick, services for the disabled, support for our seniors. This violates every faith tradition in our country and every moral tradition. It's wrong. I don't have time to think about them. I can't control them. What I want to do is put more pressure on them to make them turn. And that means more people have to speak out. Because in 2017, we had many more people coming to the camp. By this time, we had really huge protests all around the country. We're seeing that now. People are starting to rise up, but we just need more pressure. More people have to speak up. Do you think that they're benefiting from the fact that they are throwing so much ---- against the wall that we're having conversations, rightfully so, about illegal deportations for migrants, about the Trump tariffs, about annexing Canada as the 51st state, not to mention what he's trying to do with Panama and Greenland. And so there's so much that we're focused on right now that this is actually a deliberate strategy to get us talking about this very potent issue even less. Yeah, we know it's their deliberate strategy because they have said, we're going to flood the zone, give them so much to be focused on that they can't respond. Well, the reason why this Medicaid cut is so important right now is that it's imminent. Right now, the Republicans are working on this bill and hope to get it done by Memorial Day, which gives us just a few weeks to really ramp up the pressure. I know they're thrilled when we're talking about immigration. They think they're stronger on that. When they're wrong, the majority of Americans, even Republicans, think that violating people's due process rights is wrong. They don't believe we should be deporting two-year-old American children. But again, I want to fight on every front. But right now, we all have an assignment, stop this bill from passing. It has an end date. We know they may not be able to get it done by Memorial Day, but that's when they say they're getting it done. That means we need to all be rising up more in this period. The most insidious part of this all for me is that there are a few different earned benefits programs and entitlement programs that they had the option to go after. They obviously didn't touch Medicare, but they chose to hit Medicaid. And that's a program that deals with the disabled and sick as opposed to Medicare, which is the elderly, which are a more powerful voting bloc in this country. And so they knew that their goal here was to just strip health care away from people, but they tried to selectively and deliberately choose the group that had the least amount of political power in this, the people who had the smallest amount of voice, political voice, so to speak. And I think that among all the other disgusting stuff that they've been doing, that part kind of hit me the most because we know their underlying goal. It is how can we how can we strip people's access to health care away while still preserving our ability to hold on to power? And this is the group that they landed on because they are too vulnerable, too marginalized to be able to effectively or what Republicans think, to effectively mount some opposition. Right. But this is the tactic we see over and over again. Let's spend hundreds of millions of dollars focusing on trans children. That was one of their main expenditures in their last election. Yeah. Why? To whip up attention over here to distract people from what their real intention was to do the Trump tax cuts over again, that overwhelming over 80 percent of it went to the top one percent of Americans. And so this is what we have to all protect ourselves again. I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat is from a president like this that wants to try to whip up race to distract you from the issues of in your pocketbook, to whip up any marginalized group, be they immigrants, be they trans kids, you name it. They're going to try to distract with marginalized groups because they think you won't care. And that you won't focus on the fact that they're picking your pocket right now in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest. What was the most impactful speech or moment you've heard, whether it was on the steps of the U.S. Capitol or just from constituents you've spoken with, that just kind of serves as a really effective microcosm in terms of what's at stake if Republicans are successful in cutting $880 billion from Medicaid? So I think the thing that scares me the most, individual stories are so powerful, so compelling. I want more people to tell their stories and how they're impacted. But look, when I talk to my hospitals, entire hospitals are saying that because we're living on the margins already, we barely have enough to keep this hospital going. You take out Medicaid and the whole system can crumble. And so we know already that there are rural hospitals and urban hospitals that are saying we might not be able to continue operations, or at least if we do, have to curtail our services dramatically. So that's a system that will affect not the individuals alone, but really people that work there, people that deliver care there, and the thousands of people that rely on that hospital. So these are the stories that are chilling to me to see how big of an impact this is going to have. And so now for folks who are watching this right now, who are wondering what we all can do to have the biggest impact here as this fight is going to rage on for the next couple weeks before we actually have a budget that either passes or fails, what would you say to those people? I would say join protests. There's going to be a lot of things going on. I would say share content like this, conversations, educate more people, find ways to speak out that you haven't been. I rightfully, in the first months of this administration, had people demanding from me to do things different, speak out differently, take risks. Well, I'm now turning that back on you. We're trying to live to that leadership, but we need you to live to that leadership as well. What can you do? Even if it's just an hour or more a week, a few hours on the weekend, find something you can do different. That's great advice. And last question here, what's your next minimum 12 hour activity? I feel like whenever you plan, you just kind of screw yourself because now you can't do anything less than like 12 hours, which, look, I can't do anything for more than like 12 minutes because, you know, millennials on down, we have the attention span of an insect at this point. So what is what's what's next on the telegraph? My next pitch. But we are going to continue to try to do things to cause good trouble, as John Lewis would say. I like to hear it. Senator Booker, thank you so much for the time and for the work you're doing. Thank you. I mean, you are sincerely one of the voices right now that's informing, engaging and activating so many people, many of us, including me, watch your videos to get sourced with good information, but more importantly, with good spirit. So thank you for the role that you're playing in this movement. Thank you.