Cory Booker Addresses the Lead Crisis in Newark

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You know, should voters be worried about the way you handle this vital clean water situation in your city?

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I’m proud that we had incredible clean water when I was mayor of the City of Newark and ran this system right. What I’m frustrated about is that people are trying to make this a particularistic problem when it is a national crisis. Newark is not the only city in the midst of a lead crisis. In fact, we now have a nation that — where there are 3,000 jurisdictions, 3,000 where children have more than twice blood lead levels of Flint, Michigan. And so, as much as people might want to try to point fingers at my current mayor or whatever, when are we all going to step back in saying we have a massive clean water, this is not a developing nation, but we have millions and millions of families and children. And it’s not just lead in the water, you have New Hampshire people coming — so many of my town halls talking about PFAS chemicals that come from flame retardants and more poisoning water. Our in Iowa, I just did a virtual town hall where people were talking about what fracking is doing to their water. Clean water in this country should be a right.

AMANPOUR: I just spoke to General Mattis, former defense secretary, and he said one of the most — one of the biggest threats to democracy is this tribalization. You’re right in the middle of it here in the United States in your presidential campaign. I think you’re the kind of politician who enjoys trying to work across the aisle to get things done. Do you really see a time when that might happen in the near future?

BOOKER: We have agency. We can choose a way as Americans. We have seen wretchedness and divisiveness of the worst imaginable kind and we have chosen to put more indivisible into this one nation under God. My book that I wrote was entitled “United” because this is the issue I wanted to go to. And I caution my party, we cannot define the aspirations of the Democratic Party as we are here to beat Republicans. We’re at a moral moment that requires our party to speak about uniting Americans again in a — not a partisan way, new American majorities that can allow us to catch up. And when I say catch up, I watched China build 18,000 miles of high-speed rail. And busiest rail corridor in all the North America goes between Boston and Washington D.C. called the Northeast Corridor. It literally runs half an hour slower than it did in the 1960s. And so, democracies cannot function when we don’t have — we don’t affirm our shared values. And this idea that the lines divide us, they’re important but they’re not stronger than the ties that bind us.