New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is parlaying his marathon 25-hour speech from the Senate floor last month into a new book set to be published in November, sparking widespread mockery online.
Booker’s “filibuster” oration — appropriately made on April Fool’s Day — was the longest continuous speech ever given on the floor of the upper chamber, eclipsing a record set by late South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond in 1957.
Now, less than two months later, St. Martin’s Press will be publishing the book “Stand,” intended as a companion piece to the Senate floor bloviation.
“This book is about the virtues vital to our success as a nation and lessons we can draw from generations of Americans who fought for them,” the 56-year-old lawmaker said in a statement touting his forthcoming treatise.
Social media immediately erupted with scorn after the announcement, with hundreds of comments ripping Booker and questioning his motives in attempting to profit from the record-breaking monologue. “It was a grift all along,” one observer wrote.
“I can’t wait not to read this,” an X commenter quipped.
“Those poor trees,” said another.
“Rebel without a cause. Or a clue,” another user chimed in.
The former Newark mayor’s day-long screed was little more than a protracted airing of grievances against Trump, in which he railed against virtually every policy position of the administration, from Social Security and Medicaid to free speech, public education, Elon Musk and even the president’s tongue-in-cheek musings about Canada becoming the 51st US state.
He compared the moment in the country under Trump’s second term to the battle for women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement and fanned the flames of the left-wing talking point that Trump’s decisive election victory — including the first popular vote win by the GOP in 20 years — was beyond the pale.
“These are not normal times in our nation, and they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate,” Booker said. “The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”
“This is not right or left. It is right or wrong. This is not a partisan moment. It is a moral moment,” Booker said. “Where do you stand?”
The senator — who at times cried while speaking and reportedly abstained from food and water leading up to the speech to ensure he wouldn’t need a bathroom break — was lauded by left-wing media outlets like the New York Times, which called the interminable anti-Trump homily “an act of astonishing stamina.”
Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) breathlessly praised his colleague’s soliloquy as a “tour de force.”
“It’s not only the amount of time that you have spent on the floor, what strength,” Schumer said, “but the brilliance of your indictment of this awful administration that is so destroying our democracy, that is taking so much away from working people.”
Ironically, as the Garden State lawmaker railed about the decline of America under Trump, one of his staffers, Kevin A. Batts, was arrested outside the Senate Galleries for carrying a gun without a license.
“Stand” will hit bookshelves on Nov. 11.
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