Cory Booker

And so I'm just a big believer that if we allow the expediency of the moment to make us surrender our virtues and our values, if we think we can –

As Martin Luther King never made a mistake, they never thought they could beat Bull Connor by bringing bigger dogs and bigger fire hoses.

They chose in that moment to spark the moral imagination of a nation, to bring forth the best of who we are, to beat the darkness that threatened us.

So this is one of those moments in how we fight is actually going to be determinative by what kind of victory we have.

Heck no.

I think the Democratic Party helped pave the road to the crisis we're in right now.

I have a lot of deep, enduring frustrations with how our party has come up short and failed.

Even on things that are just obvious to anybody that works in Washington about how deeply corrupt this town is with, I would say, billions of dollars of cash flowing in from the wealthiest corporations and industries trying to pervert what we do.

We've normalized the abnormal and Americans are sick of it.

And so we need a restorative vision that could begin to heal our country because right now the same old, same old is just not going to do it.

Well, there's going to be an election in a matter of months.

And I think there'll be a lot of new senators coming in.

And I think there's going to be a real debate and discussion about how do we lead into the next Congress.

Right now, the most important thing I say this as a former football player, when I was in the huddle, I always tell people I know when we're going to score a touchdown is when the other huddle is divided against themselves and they're yelling and fighting.

We've got a unified caucus right now.

We need to stay together and unified.

But come November, there's going to be a debate and discussion about how we lead after November.

And I think that's going to be a very important one.

I think he's going to have to make his case before the caucus and we'll see who will challenge him.

But that's going to be a very important election.