Booker expects to be fierce opponent
But senator plans to go to Trump inauguration
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said Monday he will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration even though he expects to be one of the president-elect’s “most fearsome opponents.”
“I respect everybody’s choice in this. My personal feeling is this is the peaceful transition of power,” Booker said after speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast organized by the National Action Network, a group that hosted a protest march against Trump on Saturday.
“Barack Obama will be up there, handing off the reins of our country, and I feel ... it’s important for us to be up there. This doesn’t mean I agree with Donald Trump,” Booker said.
Several Democratic members of Congress have said they would stay away from the ceremony, including Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who joined Booker last week in criticizing Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for attorney general. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, who was the first African-American woman elected to Congress from New Jersey, said Saturday she would hold an interfaith prayer vigil in her hometown of Trenton on Inauguration Day.
“As soon as that hand goes down and the ceremonies are over, it’s time to get to work on advancing our nation’s ideals,” Booker said, “and if Donald Trump wants to repeal our health care, undermine our Justice Department, the critical work they’ve been doing for the last eight years, if he wants to go after Muslim Americans, immigrant Americans, all these things, I’m going to be fighting ... to try to make sure we don’t see the kind of change or retrenchment or reversals that I worry about.”