Cory Booker just made history ... and he's getting recognized by his fellow Senators with a huge round of applause and a standing ovation.
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00:00Regardless of your politics, you got to say it's pretty impressive for Senator Cory Booker to stand in front of the Senate for 25 hours and change.
00:11It's one of the most incredible athletic accomplishments I've ever seen.
00:15It is an athletic accomplishment.
00:16It is. 100%. I'm not even kidding.
00:18Yeah, no, I know you're not, because, I mean, he said you had to train for this.
00:24Now, this was not technically a filibuster, but I'm sure you've seen the applause that erupted from his Democratic comrades there in the Senate when he broke the record that had been held by Strom Thurmond.
00:39And he, you know, continued, even after he broke the record, continued quite a bit more.
00:46Yeah. He didn't just walk right off once he broke it. He stayed a bit.
00:50Yeah, and he got a little choked up at the applause, and there also certainly in that, the full day that he was speaking, moments where he got very choked up.
00:58Yeah.
00:59Speech aside, and what he actually said, here's what was really on the minds of certainly, I know, on my mind and a lot of people.
01:07Mine too.
01:08Because he spoke for 25 hours straight. He did not leave the Senate floor.
01:14Right. There was no five-minute bathroom break, Charles. There was no time to go eat. No.
01:17How in the world do you do that? He addressed this right after he finished the speech.
01:25And certainly it was clearly on the minds of some reporters.
01:28I talked to a lot of people. I copied some of the things we did for 15 hours.
01:32So I fasted for days into it. I stopped drinking water a long time ago.
01:36I think that had good and bad benefits. I definitely started cramping up from lack of water.
01:41So if some of you really drink nothing, at the end I was just trying to do something to stop my muscles from cramping.
01:47So there's just a lot of tactics I was using to try to make sure that I could stand for that long.
01:51Were you wearing anything that allowed you to not have to go to the bathroom for 25 hours?
01:56Again, I don't want to send a doctor to get mad at me. I don't want my doctor to get mad at me.
02:00But I really spent time dehydrating myself beforehand, so I did not have to go to the bathroom.
02:06They were asking...
02:08Are you wearing a diaper?
02:10Gently asking the question, but his answer was noncommittal.
02:14He just said, I did things to make sure. And I believe him that he certainly...
02:18There's no way you could do that without preparation for days in advance.
02:23But wouldn't you just want to have a little backup?
02:26Just in case.
02:27Just in case? I would think so.
02:30But we did go back to his office this morning and just ask it squarely.
02:35Was he wearing a diaper?
02:37They said, on the record, he was not wearing any sort of undergarment to get him through this.
02:45Which is really impressive.
02:47I know Babcock was saying that this is a big athletic achievement.
02:51I think people forget that Cory Booker played tight end for Stanford University.
02:56So the guy is definitely probably way more athletic than everyone else in Washington, D.C.
03:01Okay, but you get, you know, the game only lasts...
03:04There's halftime, you can go to the bathroom.
03:06Him being a tight end doesn't really apply to speaking for 25 hours.
03:11Shows he's a good athlete, though.
03:12And remember that this speech, what really comes out of this speech is that this propels him...
03:18Yes.
03:19...into the conversation about who's going to be the leader of the Democratic Party.
03:23Right.
03:24Who's going to be the candidates who run...
03:26There's a void, I think, right now, Charles.
03:28And 2026 is coming fast.
03:30And 2028 will be here before you know it.
03:32Why not Cory Booker?
03:33Cory Booker has put himself in the conversation.
03:35Hi, I'm Dan Morrow from San Diego, California.
03:37And to know that Cory Booker, someone who looks like me, the first African-American senator from New Jersey,
03:41stood defying all odds, beating the record for the longest speech on the Senate floor
03:48after the last one was opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1957, means a lot to a lot of Americans who look like me.
03:54Yeah, exactly.
03:55And Cory said that that's part of the reason he wanted to break Strom Thurmond's record,
04:00because the record was made while trying to stop the Civil Rights Act from being signed.
04:05So kudos to him.