Sen. Booker on if Trump can get more than Obama’s Iran nuclear deal

[0:00] Let's dive deeper on the war with Iran now and bring in New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker. Senator Booker thank you so much for joining me. [0:08] The president says peace talks could start again on Friday but Iran has still refused to negotiate. What should happen right now. What should the White [0:16] House do to jumpstart this process. Well let me just say this is the White House being embarrassed on the global stage. The president said he was going to get [0:24] unconditional surrender. Clearly he does not have that. Every aim that he said he wanted. Regime change we have a more extreme regime. Ending their pathway to a nuclear weapon they still have the highly enriched fissile material. That he was going to stop the death of all the civilians by the hand of this administration. Well this regime well there's been so much death of civilians as a result of the bombing. So none of his stated aims we've gained and now Iran has gained leverage at the table by [0:54] shutting down the strait of Hormuz. So this has been an absolute disaster and American people are paying the price by seeing their gas prices explode and cost of other consumer goods going up as well. The president who promised to be America first and to reduce prices has gotten us entangled in an unjust war and again driven up our costs. And so right now the president should be working with his allies to dismount to find a way out. But he has trapped himself in a corner where he [1:24] stated to the American people his aims but he has an Iran that is unwilling to negotiate towards those ends especially because they have found these new points of pain for us and the world and they're going to continue to play that leverage. Now we've seen how Iran is able to cripple the global economy by shutting down the straits [1:42] of Hormuz. What sort of threat do they pose to the U.S. going forward. What what can be done to prevent them from doing this again. Well again remember you don't need [1:51] to go that far back when the president Obama put in place a deal with them that completely shut off their ability to enrich uranium to that right where they could break out to a bomb. [2:03] We had international inspectors that had access to all of their sites for dough and the tons and more. We had those checks going on by the international nuclear agencies. So we had a great position of leverage on them and sanctions that were still causing pain to that regime in the economy. Donald Trump ripped all of that out. Iran sprinted towards a nuclear weapon and then he bombed them as a result. This is all because of his failed leadership. [2:31] And remember all of his early national security advisors military leaders all warned that if this president was reelected he would get us into a situation in which Americans would lose dramatically. [2:46] And so now we're in a really predict a real predicament and clearly he has no way out. And that is the frustration and why in the Senate I'm demanding that we have accountability. [2:57] Remember the Republicans who lead the Senate right now haven't had one open hearing on a war that's been going on nearly two months. No accountability. No checks and balances. No transparency. This is a president who's being allowed to get ourselves and our country into a situation. [3:14] Unfortunately that's going to be very difficult for us to get out without continuing this economic crisis and paying for Americans. We are paying the price for a president and a Congress led by Republicans who are afraid to hold him accountable. [3:29] Senator how do you think this will all end. Do you think we'll end up with a worse version of the 2014 deal. Yeah that's that's my fear is this was a president calls himself the great negotiator. [3:41] He ripped up a good deal that stopped them from getting towards a nuclear weapon and now doesn't even have the a clear pathway to get back to that deal. [3:50] Remember that deal wasn't between America and Iran. There were Russia or European allies and others all involved. It was almost like a world commitment to stopping them from having a nuclear weapon. [4:03] Well this president has alienated our allies. He insults them demeans and degrades them and has put America in a position where we're at it alone which gives us less leverage at a negotiating table. [4:16] We do not have our allies in Europe. We don't even have some of our competitors like Russia and China at the table like we used to. In fact Russia is benefiting from this war and their oil is being sold in ways that's giving them billions of dollars more. [4:33] China is seeing benefits from this conflict as well. So this is a president that has made strategic blunders of a monumental scale and put America in a weaker position. And again all while Americans already struggling because of his health care cuts already struggling because of the price of prescription drugs and other goods. [4:55] And now he's adding to our gas costs fuel costs and more. Senator I want to talk about redistricting in Virginia. Voters there approved new maps that could help Democrats flip four GOP held seats in November. [5:07] But when you ran for president you made getting rid of partisan gerrymandering a key issue. You said it was quote anti-democratic and that these kind of maps subvert the ideals of our democracy. [5:18] So was what happened yesterday in Virginia anti-democratic and did it subvert the ideals of democracy. [5:25] Yeah look partisan gerrymandering is awful. We have to end that. But remember that this was a reaction to Donald Trump pushing partisan gerrymandering in the worst kind of way mid a term. [5:40] He's trying to change the rules. He's trying to change the rules. So what Virginia and California did is react to what he did which was try to fix the game. [5:49] And when his redistricting of places like Texas. This is all a mess that the trigger point the cause of this was Donald Trump's chaos meanness and willing to break the rules of our democracy. [6:01] God I would love to go back to just months and months ago before Donald Trump started and actually do a coordinated push against things like this. [6:10] But when Donald Trump broke this you can't expect states like Virginia and California and say go ahead change the rules. [6:17] So you keep control of of the House of Representatives because what what's happening right now is that Republican controlled House of Representatives that he wants to cheat to preserve is not holding him accountable. [6:27] What we are saying is we're going to keep the level playing field and hopefully turn the House and the Senate and then begin to put in the kind of democracy preserving measures that we should which is not about gerrymandering alone. [6:41] It's also about the corruption we see in political contributions and more. And you have to forgive me my microphone fell out of my ear and I'm going to put that in while while we're talking. [6:51] Now go ahead Senator. I appreciate you the swiftness in which you just did that. I want to move on a little bit. President Trump he posted on social media that the vote in Virginia was quote rigged. [7:00] But are you concerned that we'll hear the same message from the president of Democrats win big in the midterms. [7:07] I'm not only concerned but I'm confident that is exactly what's going to happen because we don't just have this example of a fair election in Virginia that is challenging. [7:14] He's challenging. He refused to accept the 2020 election results. And remember what he did. He was tried in court for the kind of interference he did afterwards. [7:25] We had judge after judge after judge resolve that his lies about the about the 2020 elections and the fairness of that election. The lies were unjust. So we don't need any more evidence. [7:36] We saw him do this in 2020 after those elections which he said were rigged. We see it now after these elections which we say are rigged is all we know since preparing to take a shellacking in the midterms because Americans are against this war. [7:50] Americans have seen him not lower prices. Americans have seen them take away their health care. Americans have seen him lie time and time again including unleashing secret police into our communities jumping out of [8:02] unmarked cars wearing masks and dragging even Americans into detention in his ice war. All of that is going to mean that he's going to lose in the midterms and he's preparing right now. [8:12] He's putting down the predicate to try to cast doubt on that out election outcome as well. Donald Trump cannot win by the rules. He constantly tries to change them break them subvert them or pervert them in order to advance his political ambition. [8:28] This is not what we need from the highest office in the land. We need integrity, honesty, and frankly, like we've seen with past presidents, malice towards none, charity towards all. [8:38] We need someone that calls us to our better angels of our nature, not him which is dragging our country into more division and divide and darkness. [8:46] Senator Cory Booker, thank you. [8:48] Senator Cory Booker, thank you.