Sen. Cory Booker has used Vice President JD Vance’s own words to call out the Trump administration’s latest display of hypocrisy.
The Democratic senator from New Jersey on Sunday posted a clip of Vance declaring that people deserve to be fired if they celebrate Charlie Kirk’s death.
“The First Amendment protects a lot of very ugly speech but if you celebrate Charlie Kirk’s death, you should not be protected from being fired for being a disgusting person,” Vance told Fox News in September, a few days after the 31-year-old right-wing influencer was assassinated.
But Booker overlaid Vance’s clip with a screenshot of President Donald Trump’s gleeful post celebrating the death of former special counsel Robert Mueller, who died at 81 on Friday night.
“Their hypocrisy knows no bounds,” Booker, 56, wrote alongside his post.
“Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” Trump wrote in a bitter Truth Social post on Saturday, drawing swift backlash from critics, many of whom pointed to the administration’s response to commentary after Kirk’s killing and the double standards in how it treats speech.
Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, reposted the president’s sick post, helping push it further into conservative media ecosystems where it quickly gained traction.
In the full clip, Vance, 41, said, “If you are the kind of person who thinks that Charlie Kirk was justifiably murdered, sometimes the government can’t do anything about that. But you know what can — is, is civil society and I’ve actually been gratified to see all these people standing up and saying, ‘Yes, we have free speech and yes, we have free debate, but if you’re, if you’re celebrating the death of a young father, you ought to pay some consequences for it.’”
Yet, a number of MAGA figures joined Trump in rejoicing over Mueller’s death. Mueller, a Bronze Star combat veteran known for his devout faith, devotion to his family, and public service, earned the ire of Trump and his supporters after he was appointed to lead the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“President Trump says what everyone is thinking,” Trump sycophant Laura Loomer wrote on X. “He’s right. We shouldn’t be sad when bad people die.”
But others condemned the comment, with former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan arguing that the response had effectively “opened the door” for others to mirror the same language in the future.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Booker’s office, Vance’s office, and the White House for comment.
