TRENTON, N.J. – U.S. Senate candidate Rik Mehta released a heated video on Thursday first obtained by Save Jersey containing choice words for Cory Booker and Star-Ledger editorial board editor Tom Moran.
Mehta decried Moran’s “stunning lack of journalistic ethics” on full display in a May 3rd NJ.com editorial; in the offending piece, Moran muses over whether there is actually a sexual assault double-standard in American politics given how Kavanuagh accuser Christine Blasey Ford was automatically believed by many while Joe Biden’s accuser has been widely dismissed. He also lets Senator Booker off of the hook for naked hypocrisy:
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“I called Sen. Cory Booker on Friday after Biden spoke, and asked about the spectacle of Democrats rejecting Reade’s account after siding so fervently with Christine Blasey Ford during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York went so far as to say women who complain about sexual assault should be believed “every time.”
Booker says he never went that far. “I have a very strong belief that all women have a right to be heard, and to have all the facts gathered,” he said. “I said that very loudly during the Kavanaugh hearings and I know Joe Biden believes it as well, which gives me a lot of solace.”
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Of course that’s not true. Booker “went that far” and beyond. As Mehta points out, a basic online search reveals Booker’s many over-heated “Spartacus” reactions to the Kavanaugh controversy.
“The time to call your senators is now,” Booker tweeted – along with the hashtags “Stop Kavanaugh” and “Believe Survivors” – back in October 2018.
“We’re not defined by a president who does not believe women,” Booker told an Iowa crowd later that same week.
And those examples are only the tip of the iceberg; Booker infamously accused those siding with then-Judge Kavaugh of being “complicit with evil.”
“Frankly, anyone with a modicum of intellectual honesty will admit that Senator Booker’s revisionist history on this issue is a delusional lie,” said Mehta. “It offends me – and it should offend everyone in New Jersey – that a United States Senator like Cory Booker could be so comfortable in his own hypocrisy and dishonesty. Less than two years ago he made a spectacle of himself when he said that Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers were to be believed without reservation, and anyone who questioned their claims hated women. Now, with Senator Biden facing nearly identical, corroborated charges of sexual assault, Senator Booker is changing his story and moving the goalposts. Sorry, Cory, it doesn’t work that way.”
But Mehta reserved his harshest criticism for Moran.
“As a political outsider I didn’t even know who Tom Moran was until I started running for office and reading his columns. It’s amazing that a person so biased and steeped in hatred for one political party could be put in charge of an editorial page for a newspaper that bills itself as New Jersey’s largest news source,” Mehta continued. “I was embarrassed for The Star-Ledger after reading Moran’s interview with Cory Booker on NJ.com. Not only for his fawning over Senator Booker, but for admitting that he will vote for Joe Biden despite believing he is guilty of sexual assault. This is the definition of derangement.”
“If I could find this proof within minutes with three little kids running around my house during quarantine, what is Tom Moran’s excuse?” Mehta added. “As for Senator Booker, he is a fraud of the highest order and an embarrassment to New Jersey. I am going to hold him accountable when I remove him from office this November.”
A pharmacist and attorney, Mehta is competing with three other Republicans – Hirsh Singh, Natalie Rivera, and Tricia Flanagan – for his party’s nomination to challenge Booker this November.
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