Trump, Musk protest organizer praises Booker, knocks Schumer
Ezra Levin, an activist who has organized demonstrations protesting President Trump and his close ally billionaire Elon Musk, praised Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) for breaking the record for the longest speech in Senate history and knocked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), arguing the longtime Democrat is not delivering for constituents.
Levin co-founded the progressive organization Indivisible, one of the partners backing Saturday's nationwide anti-Trump protests. He said that while Musk, the president and the “Make America Great Again” movement are the primary targets of the demonstrations, Democrats like Schumer are also in their crosshairs.
“People like Chuck Schumer, who surrender to the Republicans in Congress, aren‘t giving their constituents what they want. We saw Cory Booker stand up in the Senate and break the record for the longest filibuster ever, ever given,” Levin said during his Friday morning appearance on CNN. “Why did he do that? Why did he do that? He told us why. He told us why. He said that he heard from his own constituents that they want to see him fight back. And he got creative. He did it.”
For that reason, Levin argued, the U.S. needs “ more Cory Bookers and fewer Schumers.”
Schumer has faced strong backlash over his decision last month to help Republicans in the Senate advance a GOP-led spending bill to keep the government open.
Levin has been vocal about wanting Schumer to step down as the minority leader, telling The Christian Science Monitor last month that the rift between the rank-and-file Democrats and congressional leadership is bigger than what it was in 2016, when Trump won the presidency for the first time.
“The vast supermajority of Dems want to see Dems fight back, and a super-supermajority say that they’re not fighting back hard enough,” the activist said in the interview published March 18. “It’s pretty clear what the problem is, and we’ve been trying to communicate this to Schumer and others for months now.”
Levin said on CNN that in order to achieve that change, “we gotta show up and demand it.”
“Indivisible, we're not an arm of the Democratic Party. My goal is not to help the Democratic Party,” Levin said. “My goal is to build a unified opposition to an authoritarian takeover of our country.”
Indivisible Project, the group’s 501(c)4 entity, has received more than $7.6 million since 2017 from Open Society Foundations, a nonprofit founded by Democratic megadonor and business mogul George Soros.