Senator Cory Booker has broken the record for the longest speech ever delivered in the Senate.
The New Jersey Democrat spoke for 25 hours and 5 minutes, according to his office, breaking the record for the longest floor speech in modern history of the chamber as he spoke in protest of President Donald Trump’s “unconstitutional” actions.
Booker said he would speak for as long as he was physically able as he began his address at around 19:00 local time on Monday evening. He concluded at 20:06 on Tuesday.
Booker, 55, surpassed the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s speech that lasted 24 hour and 18 minutes in 1957. Booker said that he was speaking “in spite” of the previous record holder’s remarks against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
“Since I’ve gotten to the Senate, I always felt it was a strange shadow hanging over this institution — that the longest speech, all the issues that have come up, all the noble causes that people have done, or the things that typically try to stop – I just found it strange that he had the record,” Booker told CNN. “And as a guy who grew up with the legends of the Civil Rights Movement, myself, my parents and their friends, it just would seem wrong to me. It always seemed wrong.”
He lashed out at Trump’s radical cost-cutting policies that have seen his top advisor Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, slash entire government programs without consent from Congress.
The senator said Trump’s aggressive seizing of ever-more executive power had put US democracy at risk.
“Unnecessary hardships are being borne by Americans of all backgrounds. And institutions which are special in America, which are precious and which are unique in our country, are being recklessly – and I would say even unconstitutionally – affected, attacked, even shattered,” Booker said.
“In just 71 days the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy,” he said.
