Back when he was running for president in 2019, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker became a bit of a meme when people realized that he had tweeted, at least 14 times, more or less the same joke about how much he loved coffee. For example, on May 29, 2009, Booker wrote: “”Sleep” and I broke up a few nights ago. I’m dating “Coffee” now. She’s Hot!” If you doubted it before, Booker made it very clear over the past 24 hours that he meant every one of those jokes.
Today, Booker broke the record for the longest-ever filibuster from the U.S. Senate floor. The Democratic senator first began his marathon speech at 7 p.m. last night, and announced he would continue “for as long as I am physically able.” Though he took short breaks to allow colleagues to ask questions, the politician spent more than a day filibustering, breaking the existing record when he hit the 24-hour, 19-minute mark. All in all, the speech continued for about 25 hours and eight minutes.
As he passed the milestone, there were well over 110 thousand people watching Booker speak on his official YouTube channel. Beyond that, there were about 150 thousand watching on the Associated Press’ channel, and about another 50 watching on PBS News Hour’s channel, with a number of other channels drawing several thousand more. While it may not be the same audience Marvel draws for shots of empty chairs, it’s a hell of a lot more people than usually watch C-SPAN at 7 pm on a Tuesday night. More concrete figures from other platforms and traditional channels will arrive in the coming days, but during one of his questions, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy cited one figure claiming that 150 million people had at least clicked on the link while he was filibustering.
In the immediate lead-up to the benchmark, Booker reflected on his memories with Representative John Lewis and how he inspired him to political action. Elsewhere, the content of the speech was been sharply critical of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the current administration and their policies. Overnight, he read letters from concerned constituents, per NPR, and offered remarks on immigration, Social Security, education, free speech, the economy, and foreign policy.
Before today, the longest speech on the Senate floor in U.S. history came from Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to protest the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Booker said it’s wrong to hate Thurmond, so in his moment of victory, we’ll just say: it’s nice to see him lose, even if it’s from beyond the grave.
