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Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) lashed out at Mike Waltz after he suggested former President Joe Biden's administration shared some of the blame for the so-called SignalGate scandal, where he shared secret war plans with a journalist on a group messaging app.
The New Jersey senator chewed out President Donald Trump's nominee for United Nations ambassador at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
"Congressman Waltz, I've watched this hearing, and I've been really disappointed," Booker opined. "And what's been troubling to me about your nomination from the beginning is your failure to just stand up and take accountability for mistakes that you made and that all Americans know that you've made."
"But I heard you just blame Biden," he continued. "I've seen you not only fail to stand up, but lie... You denied, deflected, and then you did something that to me really lacks integrity, is that you sought out to demean and degrade that very journalist in crass and frankly cruel ways that made him a target."
"Smearing people, attacking folks, singling them out, just furthers, compounds what I think is disqualifying about you for this position. It also, to me, just shows profound cowardice."
Booker noted that Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) had pressed Waltz on the Signal scandal earlier in the hearing.
"Unfortunately, what you're doing to me is perfectly in line with the way this administration as a whole has operated," he observed. "We have too much of that rhetoric, that divisive, demeaning, degrading, cruelness that's being elevated and celebrated by this administration that you seem to fall in line with."
"I just watched with great disappointment that even after weeks, if not months of reflection, you couldn't sit before this committee and take some responsibility and talk constructively about what's learned," Booker added. "Instead, you do what seems to be yet another creative tool that people are doing, which is, hey, let me just blame Biden."
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