Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) weighed in on comments from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) Monday encouraging people to confront Trump administration officials and protest their policies. Recently, protestors disrupted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s dinner last week and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia on Friday because she worked for Trump.
"If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere," Rep. Waters told her supporters at a rally Saturday.
When asked if he agreed with the idea of telling Trump officials, like Sanders, that they’re not welcome as a form of protest, Booker did not directly reply but told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that he subscribes to an ideal of “radical love.”
"Yes, you should protest. Yes, you should confront evil and injustice," he said. "But do it in the ways that Martin Luther King did … Recognizing the dignity of even those who you oppose, even those who are trying to destroy you, even those that hate you."
Booker emphasized that "we've got to get to a point in our country where we can talk to each other, where we are all seeking a more beloved community, and some of those tactics that people are advocating for, to me, don't reflect that spirit."
He concluded, however, that he would confront those he disagreed with in protest but would “lead with love.”
"Yes, if I saw an administrator out and about, there's nothing wrong with confronting that person,” he said, “but not to lead with love and to do it in a way that is more reflective of the values that we are trying to reject in our country is unacceptable to me."
"Let's elevate those tactics from people that we hail in our nation, from Gandhi to King, and reflect those values in our urgent protests, in our urgent activism, but always leading with love in our country," he concluded.