Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen fired back at Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Wednesday, saying that the senator’s tirade targeting her during a hearing last week was an “unfortunate waste” of time.
In an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” Nielsen said that Booker’s comments were a “distraction” from a hearing that should have focused on “real threats” and the needs of the Homeland Security Department to combat them.
The comments came just over a week after Booker lashed out at Nielsen during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for saying that she did not recall President Trump using the word “shithole” to describe certain countries during an Oval Office meeting earlier this month.
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“It became 11 minutes of a lecture about a meeting he was not in, about one word, and about whether or not I heard it,” Nielsen said. “I said under testimony, was it possible? Sure. I just didn’t hear the word. That was it.”
“He has no interest in what the secretary of Homeland Security thinks,” she added. “He just wanted to lecture me for 11 minutes and it was an unfortunate waste of all of our time when we could have been focused on the needs and threats we have.”
Booker, who is widely seen as a potential White House candidate in 2020, ripped Nielsen for insisting that she could not corroborate accounts that Trump asked why the U.S. should admit immigrants from “shithole countries” such as Haiti over immigrants from countries like Norway.
“Your silence and your amnesia is complicity,” Booker said at the time.
Nielsen, who attended the Oval Office meeting in which Trump made the alleged remarks, has said that she does not recall Trump using such language, but acknowledged that people in the room had used “tough” language and that Trump spoke sternly about immigration.