The Media Research Center did a lot of whining about Sen. Cory Booker’s marathon 25-hour speech on the Senate floor, and the whining continued in an April 5 post by Alex Christy:
The cast of Friday’s PBS News Hour could hardly contain their excitement over Sen. Cory Booker’s 25-hour Senate speech denouncing all things Donald Trump. Host Amna Nawaz claimed it “inspired” people, a point echoed by Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart, who labeled it “inspiring.” Meanwhile, New York Times columnist David Brooks praised Booker for being “upbeat” in contrast to Trump’s “gloom and carnage.”
Nawaz began, “We saw Senator Cory Booker take to the Senate floor in a record-breaking speech that he said, his office said, inspired thousands of people to call into his office.”
She also wondered, “You had hundreds of millions of people liking and commenting online. And we also now have more than 1,000 planned protests coming up this weekend against President Trump in cities across the country. Is there a momentum shift? What’s going on here with Democrats?”
Apparently, liberals just want style over substance, “They wanted someone in an elected position, someone of some stature, to stand up and say, explain what was going on, to give voice to what they were feeling about what was happening to their country, about who was doing it, about what we need to do to remind ourselves of who we are as a country.”
When Capehart noted that the video of Booker got 350 million likes on TikTok, Christy huffed: “There are not even 350 million American citizens, let alone adults or Democratic voters, so that means many foreigners liked the TikTok video, which does not actually tell us much about how Booker’s speech will impact politics going forward.”
David Milliken guest wrote the MRC’s daily hate-watch of “The View” on April 7, and he complained that Booker was a guest there:
ABC’s The View hosted Senator Cory Booker (D- NJ) Monday morning, following his record-breaking 25-hour yap-fest on the Senate floor the previous week. The panel had very little specific to ask Booker, though, and spent most of their time praising him to the sky, and applauding as he trotted out a few stock Democratic talking points.
Whoopi Goldberg welcomed Booker with this hard hitting question, “It’s so nice to see you sitting. Did you get any rest?”
Rather than going into anything Booker had actually said in those 25 hours, Goldberg then turned to the mass protest of the previous weekend, asking him “How happy were you to see all the folks that came out around the country?” as if he played a role.
She then smiled and nodded along as he rambled:
[…]Ana Navarro then got in on the vacuous fawning, and while she too made no attempt to nail Booker down on anything substantial, she gloated: “the question we all want to know is, how did it feel for you to break the record of Strom Thurmond, that racist who set the record filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957? I hope he’s turning over in his grave.”
[…]The panel completely ignored such realities as that Thurmond and Bull Connor were long since dead and gone, their opposition to the civil rights movement back in 1957 was in no way relevant to anything Cory Booker had said or done in 2025. Booker’s suggestion that God had used Thurmond for his own glory decades later, was more grandiose than his “I am Spartacus” moment.
On top of that, Navarro completely overlooked the inconvenient fact that, like most opponents of desegregation, Thurmond was a Democrat at the time of his filibuster.
Milliken overlooked the inconvenient fact that Thurmond became a Republican in 1964 without significantly changing his anti-civil rights views.
Christy put on his comedy-cop hat to whine about Booker appearing on a late-night TV show in an April 8 post, baselessly portraying Booker as an egomaniac:
Sen. Cory Booker continued his tour of adoring media on Monday as he joined CBS and The Late Show host Stephen Colbert for a three-segment interview to look back at his 25-hour talk session and ahead to what comes next. Booker has been eager to compare himself to the Civil Rights Movement, and Colbert was more than willing to assist him in those efforts.
Colbert declared, “So, one of the nice aspects of it, now, you are up there, you weren’t talking about you. You were talking about our nation, the challenges it faces, not just these challenges, but the challenges we always face and the need to face them in some realistic and collaborative way. But along the way of talking about that, you managed to wipe out Strom Thurmond’s 1957 record. Which was shameful. Can you remind everybody what the previous record was held and trying to stop?
[…]The last time Booker did something like this was his infamous Spartacus shtick, only to face planted in the Democratic primary, a result that will likely repeat itself because ultimately this was a “Hey, look at me” moment, not a profound 2025 version of the Civil Rights Movement.
Graham returned to grumble in his April 9 column that Booker’s speech — which he sneered in his headline was a “blab-a-thon” — wasn’t sufficiently fact-checked:
The latest glowing exhibit is Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). In his “historic” 25-hour speech on the Senate floor in protest of President Trump, PolitiFact plucked out one innocuous claim and ruled it “True.” Booker said, “The consumer confidence in this country has gone way down.” It’s true. The Conference Board measurement has dropped since Trump won.
But what about the other 25 hours of statements? Were they entirely factual? Don’t count on PolitiFact for a ruling, because they are in the tank for Cory Booker. He’s received five “True” ratings in a row dating back to 2019.
Graham couldn’t be bothered to do his own fact-checking of the speech.
A month later, the MRC was still complaining about Booker’s speech. Rehashing an old post in the midst of bashing PBS for not being exactly like Fox News, Graham groused in his May 9 column that “A month ago, ‘trusted’ PBS fawned over Booker’s fake filibuster. PBS pundit Jonathan Capehart found it ‘so inspiring’ and his pseudoconservative counterpart David Brooks gushed, ‘if Donald Trump is going to be all about gloom and carnage and threat, Cory Booker is about upbeat. And that’s a good way to counter the vibe of Donald Trump.'” Graham didn’t prove any of those assessments to be wrong.
Christy served up even more whining about Booker in a May 29 post:
Usually when a Democratic politician goes on a late night comedy show, the host will tell the politician what a big fan they are, but on Wednesday, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker reversed the roles and gushed to ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel about how great he thinks he is. Naturally, Kimmel also made it clear he was a Booker fan as he later asked Booker to give him and his fellow liberals tactical political advice.
[…]Ultimately, Booker’s appearance highlights the truth of the late night shows. Democrats view them as part of the team. They are not to be entertainers. They exist to deliver whatever the latest party talking points are and to be a platform for aspiring 2028 candidates.
Christy won’t tell you that he an the MRC are part of the Republican team and exists to deliver whatever the latest party talking points are and to be a platform for aspiring 2028 candidates.