RNC accuses Booker of ‘mansplaining’ to DHS chief

The Republican National Committee (RNC) slammed Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Wednesday, accusing him of “mansplaining” to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during her hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In an email titled “Derogatory Cory,” the RNC urged readers to “picture” a male Republican lawmaker “mansplaining” to a female Cabinet secretary.

“There’d be so many triggered Democrats that there’d be a hashtag within minutes, campus protests across the country, and the topic-du-jour for celebrities at Hollywood’s next award show,” the email reads. “But because the party affiliations were reversed, Derogatory Cory got nothing but praise from the selectively-outraged base he was clearly performing for yesterday.”

The email comes after Booker on Tuesday criticized Nielsen during an open hearing for claiming she did not hear President Trump use the phrase “shithole countries” to refer to some African nations, El Salvador and Haiti during a meeting on immigration.

“When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power, it is a dangerous force in our country. Your silence and your amnesia is complicity,” Booker told Nielsen. 

Booker on Wednesday called Trump’s reported comments about immigrants “gut-churning,” blasting the president for what he described as bigotry. 

“It’s not the vulgarity. It’s definitely not the vulgarity,” Booker told CNN. “It’s the bigotry and the discrimination that comes from the mouth of the president that, in our climate today, causes damage.”

The RNC email ended with the line “nevertheless, she persisted,” a poke at the phrase inadvertently popularized as a feminist rally cry by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when he used it to refer to discuss the upper chamber’s silencing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last year.