Cory Booker Uses Barrett Confirmation Hearing to Defend Kneeling Athletes
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) used his question time at the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barret to defend athletes who kneel during the national anthem in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Booker told Barrett:
You can’t turn on the TV and watch basketball without courageous athletes trying to talk to the heart of America to say, please listen, please listen. The system is endangering lives, taking away liberty, taking away your financial — your financial well-being, taking you away from your children. There are people marching in all 50 states, 18 other countries because African-Americans, when they’re jogging, sleeping in their home, are being killed. And we have a nation now where we are doing a Supreme Court justice hearing — the last days of an ongoing election to a president that cannot even condemn white supremacy [sic]. Where he tells white supremacist groups [sic], “stand by.” Where they are menacing and literally recruiting people to do so-called poll watching — which many people have sounded the alarm in African American communities.
Booker was wrong in his factual claims. The president has, in fact, condemned white supremacy many times, and the group about which he said “stand by” is not a white supremacist group.
Trump used the words “stand by” because he had been asked by the moderator to tell white supremacist and militia groups to “stand down.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.