Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker appeared on CNN and told Jake Tapper that higher taxes wouldn’t be a problem because of “patriotism.”
During a pre-recorded interview that aired on Sunday’s “State of the Union,” Booker claimed that the threat of higher taxes wouldn’t be enough to prevent people from voting against President Trump in his 2020 re-election bid.
“We live in a nation with far more patriotism than people are expressing. What I mean is folks want the best for the country,” Sen. Cory Booker explained.
Anchor Jake Tapper began by asking Booker how he would “make a pitch” to voters when the U.S. economy is booming.
Sen. Booker responded by explaining that, at least in his neighborhood, people were not feeling economic improvements. When Host Tapper pointed out that unemployment indices and wage increases were seeing improvements that couldn’t be seen “during the Obama years,” Sen. Booker immediately pivoted to give former President Obama credit for the improvements he had just dismissed as negligible.
“I love that Trump is taking credit for a recovery that started under Obama,” he smiled.
Then Tapper slammed him with the fact that most Democrats, including Booker, were pushing policies that would require tax increases. “What’s the counterargument?” he asked.
“We live in a nation with far more patriotism than people are expressing,” Booker replied, going into an argument that patriotism and consideration for fellow citizens would lead Americans to see past their own personal economics to understand that they should feel glad for the opportunity to invest in each other.
“This is a moment where across this country, farm towns, factory towns, cities to suburbs, we have so much common pain where Americans are seeing, from the cost of prescription drugs, cost of college, we’re all hurting because we have not designed an economy that invests in each other,” the Senator concluded.
