Perhaps surprisingly, New Jersey senator Cory Booker isn’t just blaming Donald Trump for the recent problems at Newark International Airport. During a recent interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the politician pointed to both infrastructure failures and Trump for the much mocked airport.
“So you’re telling me that it’s not necessarily Trump’s fault, this situation we have in Newark?” Kimmel asked the New Jersey politician.
“I’m telling you candidly, it’s both,” Booker said. “We have deferred infrastructure improvements that we should not have. But when Trump came in and DOGE and Elon Musk began firing key safety officials for the FAA, began laying off key personnel — one of the biggest issues right now is a personnel issue in addition to the technology issue.”
Earlier this months, hundreds of flight cancelations and delays at Newark caused Democratic Minority Leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer to call for an investigation into the cause. It was eventually found that several compounding issues led to the widely mocked delays, including staffing shortages when it came to air traffic controllers, aging technology, the airport closing its busiest runways and bad weather. While on Kimmel’s show, Booker also noted that the infrastructure for U.S. airports is the same technology that was used when his grandparents were alive.
“This is the president who said he was going to keep us safe by firing health officials, by firing FAA officials, by firing the people who inspect our food,” Booker continued. “This man has patently made us less safe as a nation. And this is an example he contributed.”
That was far from the only shot Booker took at Trump on Wednesday night. The senator also called the president “the greatest grifter to ever be in the White House” and appeared shocked that Trump is “doing it out in the open.”
“He has made billions of dollars since he’s been in office by grifting off of that public position, and it’s disgusting. There’s very little accountability if Congress won’t do what Congress was designed to do, which is to offer checks and balances to the presidency,” Booker said. Watch the full ABC interview above.
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