Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) joined ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Wednesday night to trash “authoritarian” Donald Trump while praising oh-so-brave “performers, poets and artists” for attacking the president and his agenda.
Booker specifically blasted Trump for daring to challenge Bruce Springsteen’s almost endless abuse while his host cheered and waited for his turn to attack the Republican who swept back to the Oval Office.
The senator began by looking back at post-war Los Angeles and what he claimed was a warm, receiving environment for the family in which he was raised acting a a counterpoint to alleged hostility elsewhere in the nation.
He observed, “But here in L.A., it was black artists at that time that sustained that community, comedians from Richard Pryor to Redd Foxx, who helped heal and turn the absurdities of the time into not just laughter, but really helping them deal with the anguish.”
Booker went on to compare then to now, flattering his host by saying “we’re in that time now. There’s a reason why authoritarian leaders attack artists, because they’re so powerful. And we are in one of these moral moments again. A lot of people tune in now, not just to laugh, but actually to have someone who can help them address what’s going on, feel a part of a larger family.”
Booker pointed to rocker Bruce Springsteen – whom he called “the patron saint of New Jersey” – as an important element of opposition to Trump along with other “performers, poets and artists” because “the arts right now are vital to our community” in attacking a democratically elected president and his administration.
Booker didn’t stop there. He sees Trump reforms across a host of areas as challenging the staid, comforting ways of the departed Democrat administration with Kimmel offering grinning approval of the guest’s observations.
“[…] We have deferred infrastructure improvements that we should not have — that we should not have. But when Trump came in and DOGE and Elon Musk began firing key safety officials for the FAA, began laying off key personnel, one of the biggest issues right now is a personnel issue, in addition to the technology issue.
“So this is the president of the United States who said he was going to keep us safe, but firing health officials, firing FAA officials, firing the people that inspect our food. This man has patently made us less safe as a nation. This is an example that he contributed to it.”
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