Cory Booker Slams Trump’s Coronavirus Response: A “Perverse Kind of ‘Hunger Games'”

Sen. Cory Booker is heading into the weekend swinging. Friday morning on The View, the New Jersey senator held nothing back in a scathing rebuke of President Trump‘s coronavirus response. Booker said that Trump’s refusal to implement a national strategy is “a failure of leadership,” as it forces states to battle over necessary medical equipment. “What we should be doing is not having this kind of perverse Hunger Games where you have, literally, governors competing against each other for the critical resources they need,” he told The View‘s co-hosts.

This morning, Booker discussed the Senate’s return to Washington for what he described an “outrageous” and non-essential session on judicial appointees. “We have got to get to the work of the people and not the ridiculous partisan antics we just saw,” he said. “We’re picking topics that are the most divisive when we could be unifying to serve and help in this crisis.”

When he was asked specifically about Trump’s coronavirus response, the New Jersey senator said that we need to be listening to the CDC’s scientists and medical experts for guidance rather than the president, who has pushed to reopen states, even as positive cases increase. “If we open too early, like we did in 1918 — the second wave was worse than the first,” said Booker. “We’ve got to do this right.”

“What really frustrates me is — I hear people using militaristic terms. ‘This is a war,’ I’ve heard people say that,” he continued. If that’s the case, said Booker, a country-wide competition among governors is the last thing that should be happening. “We didn’t do that in World War II. We had a national mobilization to meet the threat to our nation,” he said.

Booker went on to implore Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act to produce necessary PPE, medical equipment, and tests to help the country reopen safely and protect American lives. “This is a failure of leadership, and it’s a shame,” he said. “Our president now is demeaning, degrading, divisive, insulting people, calling out governors, tweeting out the most impulsively, ridiculous things about liberating states. When everyone in this country wants to keep human lives safe, he seems to want to try to trigger partisan animosity to better help his reelection.”

“We need leadership on the national level, and I’m frustrated that the president is not rising to this occasion,” concluded the senator. “[Trump is] one of the few world leaders whose approval rating is actually going down.”

Watch Cory Booker rip Trump’s “Hunger Games” coronavirus response in the clip above.

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