By Matt Rooney
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Cory Booker is better known for his obnoxious, condescending, and often vapid Twitter activity, Save Jerseyans, but his commentary concerning Facebook could end up being a much bigger deal for the struggling Democrat presidential candidate. Not in a good way either.
He dropped by ABC’s “This Week” program over the weekend and made a little news after he was asked about the call by Facebook’s co-founder to break up the social media company. Booker responded by pledging that, as president, he would direct his DOJ “to do the proper investigations and hold industries accountable for corporate consolidation.” Then Booker hedged.
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The New Jersey junior senator also said he doesn’t “think that a president should be running around pointing at companies and saying ‘breaking them up’ without any kind of process here.”
He even slammed Elizabeth Warren, declaring her Facebook break up plan “sounds more like a Donald Trump thing to say, like, ‘I’m going to break up you guys’ … no.”
Interesting.
Why? Because Booker has made a point of embracing every wingnut, far-left, ardently anti-business opinion and idea this cycle in an attempt to stand out in a crowded primary field. Training his sights on Facebook would be the ideologically consistent next battlefront.
The problems (yes, plural) for Booker:
First, Booker traditionally raked in a ton of donations from Silicon Valley. His fundraising isn’t going well. He can’t risk pissing off Palo Alto.
Secondly, there’s the issue of the $100 million donated by Mark Zuckerberg for the benefit of Newark’s public schools back in 2010. Booker was mayor back then. The money was squandered notwithstanding the initial celebration, elevated expectations, big promises, and even a roll-out photo-op on Oprah. Click here for more background. The cash is gone and nothing tangible came of it for Newark’s kids.
Booker’s party’s base hates “big business” more than it cares about educational reform.
He’ll need a better answer for them in the debates than “[w]e need to create systems and processes.”
But if Booker takes too hard of a line on Facebook, then he runs the risk of shining a light not only on his history with the increasingly unpopular Zuckerberg but also his own record of incompetence and failure as mayor of Newark.
This is one challenge he’s not going to be able to hide on his timeline and forget about. Stay tuned.
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MATT ROONEY is a practicing New Jersey attorney, regular panelist on ‘Chasing News’ with Bill Spadea, and the founder and blogger-in-chief of Save Jersey.
