By Matt Rooney
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Cory Booker is polling at 0%, Save Jerseyans, so he was undoubtedly loved the opportunity to engage directing with Democrat 2020 front runner Joe Biden at Wednesday night’s presidential primary debate in Detroit.
The flare-up centered on criminal justice reform, a topic over which the two candidates have traded barbs in recent days.
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“There was nothing done during the entire eight years as mayor… to deal with the corrupt police department,” former VP Biden told the moderator, repeatedly laying into Booker over his oversight of the Newark police department.
Senator Booker – who served as mayor of New Jersey’s most populous city from 2006 to 2013 – laid off 167 police officers in 2010 and crime severely spiked. His overall record has been widely panned by the Right and the Left. Biden naturally focused more on the ‘social justice’ dimensions of the former mayor’s record, calling Newark a ‘civil rights nightmare’ prior to the debate. Booker insisted that the Vice President was distorting his record.
“There’s a saying in my community: you’re dipping into the Kool-Aid, but you don’t know the flavor,” countered Booker, garnering a healthy volley laughter from the audience.
CNN is live-streaming the debate here.
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