In a hearing room that has seen its share of hollow grandstanding, Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee spectacle reached a new nadir, as U.S. Senator Cory Booker and FBI Director Kash Patel engaged in a mutually beneficial display of performative outrage that achieved absolutely nothing for the American people.
The encounter was not a clash of principles but a cynical transaction.
For Patel, a Trump loyalist with the thinnest of law enforcement resumes, playing the aggrieved strongman in the face of Democratic “bullying” solidifies his standing with a base that fetishizes confrontation.
For Booker, a senator whose ambition has always been outsized compared to his accomplishments, the “furious anguish” was a carefully calibrated performance, designed not to hold power accountable, but to generate the viral clips and outraged headlines that fuel fundraising machines and pacify a progressive base hungry for any sign of fight.
From the moment he began his pre-scripted monologue, Booker’s priority was clear: the camera, not the constituent.
His voice dripping with a rehearsed moralism, he cataloged Patel’s very real sins—the purging of seasoned agents, the politicization of the Bureau, the reckless shift in resources. But these valid critiques were not delivered as a means to an end; they were the end.
The goal was not to extract information or force change, but to create a moment.
The crescendo of his speech, the raised voice, the pointed finger—it was all stagecraft, a pantomime of resistance designed for a 90-second segment on cable news and a 30-second clip in a fundraising blast.
When Patel bit back with the predictable “rant of false information” line, Booker’s resulting “My God! My God!” was not the cry of a frustrated public servant. It was the exclamation of an actor who just got his cue, the moment of conflict he needed to elevate his performance from boring oversight to must-see TV.
The subsequent “storm-out” was the masterpiece of the performance. It was not a protest. It was a punctuation mark. It was the physical manifestation of the email his campaign doubtlessly sent hours later: “I was so angry I had to walk out. If you’re angry too, chip in $5 now.”
In a fundraising email deployed today, Booker said, “I believe that Trump’s cabinet should be taking a moral position — especially those that are parts of agencies like Health and Human Services or the Justice Department — and resign from their posts.”
Booker voted to confirm four of Trump’s cabinet nominees, abstaining on three others, and he was the only Democratic senator who voted to confirm Charles Kushner to be US ambassador to France. Kushner is a billionaire real estate mogul from New Jersey, a convicted criminal, and the father in law of Trump’s daughter.
Across the aisle, Patel played his part to perfection.
The unqualified director, installed precisely for his loyalty and his willingness to be a partisan bulldog, gave the performance his master demanded: smug, defiant, and utterly contemptuous of the process he was ostensibly there to respect.
“Kash Patel and Cory Booker are perfect foils, one needs a villain to play the hero, the other needs a critic to play the victim,” said anti-establishment progressive Democrat Lisa McCormick, who opposed disgraced former US Senator Bob Menendez in the 2018 primary election. “They feed off each other’s artifice, prospering in the ecosystem of outrage while the institutions they represent crumble from within.”
“The real tragedy is not this farcical hearing. It is the deafening silence that follows,” said McCormick. “Where are the substantive, grinding, un-telegenic efforts to actually check this power? Where are the legislative maneuvers, the painstaking oversight, the building of bipartisan coalitions of the sensible?”
“They are sacrificed on the altar of the clip, the tweet, and the donation page,” said McCormick. “On Tuesday, Booker didn’t stand up to power. He auditioned for it. And Kash Patel didn’t defend the FBI. He debased it.”
McCormick asid the American people, desperate for seriousness and competence, were left with nothing but the empty echo of their shouting and the certain promise that a fundraising email was already on its way.