Booker Says He Would 'Be Looking to Women First' For His Vice President

Lauretta Brown | February 13, 2019 12:15 PM

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday night that he would “be looking to women first” as running mates if he were to win the 2020 Democratic primary.

Maddow asked Booker if he would commit to choosing a woman as his vice president if he got the nomination.

Maddow: If you got the nomination, would you commit to choosing a woman as your vice presidential running mate? pic.twitter.com/zjlimuOrsN
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) February 13, 2019

“I think it would be malpractice, I’m not going to make any specific commitments,” Booker replied. “I believe we should have a woman president right now and have worked very hard to get one but we have such a great field of leaders, I think that you will rarely see a Democratic ticket anymore without gender diversity, race diversity. I think it’s something we should have.”

“I’m not going to box myself in, but should I become it, you know I’ll be looking to women first,” he added.

Booker also called President Trump a “crisis,” while lamenting the increased division in the country’s politics.

“You have hate being spewed from the highest office in the land,” Booker said of Trump.

He said he wanted to unite the country to address its problems, many of which, he said, are a lot older than Trump.

“Massive environmental injustice, massive economic injustice, massive race and racism embedded in our system, going on before Donald Trump, obviously he’s made it worse,” he said, “he’s a crisis, but there’s a worry and a fear that we are not motivated anymore collectively in the way that we were to meet other morally unjust things.”

Booker met with some controversy recently when he told a Vegan magazine that one of the country’s problems, in his opinion, was that the planet can’t “sustain” people eating meat.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) had a message for Booker in response.

Hey ?@CoryBooker? I support PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals. ?@BeefUSA? #WyomingBeefCountry pic.twitter.com/G7Tx061x8F
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) February 12, 2019