I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, March 28th.

I'd like to play a few excerpts from New Jersey Senator Cory Booker at the confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee

last week of Katanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court.

Play those excerpts and open the phones for people who might identify with some of the stories

he's telling and we'll hear from her a little bit in this.

But why Cory Booker?

Well, as some of you know from following the news,

Senator Booker had a real moment during that hearing. I mean, we kept hearing about, you know,

the Ted Cruz moments and the Lindsey Graham moments challenging and sometimes in ridiculous ways,

Judge Jackson. But I want to focus on the Senator Booker moment

that really blew up online, a number of them, but that maybe you haven't heard so much

on the air, where he gave Judge Jackson a little break after she was getting pounded

in some of those questionable ways,

like implying that she was a Q and on-type child pornography subject,

Booker used his time to give a little speech and tell a few stories that were as personal as they were political and that did go viral online.

Maybe you heard the headline from that part of the hearing, which was that Booker's speech brought Judge Jackson to tears.

But that's where most of the coverage ended.

Or maybe it included just a few seconds of Booker as they showed the image of Judge

Jackson quietly tearing up.

So I thought, let's use the luxury of the long-form time that we have on this show to let

the Booker clip stretch out a little bit and let most of you hear these moments for the

first time because I know

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