Booker: Trump ‘particularly responsible’ for rising hate

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a 2020 presidential candidate, said on Sunday that President Trump is “particularly responsible” for rising hate leading to deadly attacks. 

“In my faith, I have this belief that you reap what you sow and he is sowing seeds of hate in this country. This harvest of hate violence we’re seeing right now lies at his feet. When you have a president from the highest moral office in our land talking about invasions and infestations and shithole countries the kind of things that come out of his mouth, and so harm the moral fabric of our nation, is responsible,” Booker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

{mosads} “He is responsible when he is taking no action whatsoever to condemn white supremacy even when his own FBI is talking about this being sourcing major parts of our problems.” 

His comments Sunday follows a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas that killed 20 people. The shooter is alleged to have written a white supremacist manifesto. 

A separate shooting early Sunday morning killed 9 people and injured 26 others in a shooting in Dayton, Ohio. 

Booker, who has one of the most comprehensive gun reform proposals of the 2020 Democrats, said Trump can do two things to address the issue.

First, he said, “we need to deal with this issue of guns in our community, the ease of access.”

“We have a uniquely American problem because of the uniquely American phenomenon,”  he said. 

Secondly, he said,  the U.S. needs “moral clarity,” healing and love. 

“We have a president that is not only incapable of showing that kind of love but he is stoking, through his language, hate. He is responsible for the crisis in our country and is doing nothing to actually solve it is unacceptable,” Booker said. 

Booker also said Republicans have a responsibility to join Democrats in calling out the president’s racist language.

“There is complicity in the present’s hatred that undermines the goodness and decency of Americans, regardless of what party, to say nothing in a time of rising hatred,” he said. “It’s not enough to say ‘I’m not a hate monger myself.’ If you are not actively working against hate, calling it out, you are complicit in what is going on.”