'Fasted for days': Cory Booker didn't eat or drink ahead of record breaking speech
New details about Democratic Sen. Cory Booker’s record-breaking marathon speech are beginning to emerge and reveal how the New Jersey lawmaker was physically able to accomplish the longest floor speech in the history of the United States Senate.
Booker ended his record 25-hour floor speech Tuesday evening after spending a continuous day railing against actions ushered in by President Donald Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk.
"I fasted for days into it, I stopped drinking water a long time ago,” Booker told a group of reporters, according to CNN’s Manu Raju. “I think that had good and bad benefits; I definitely started cramping up from lack of water. So if some of you saw me really drink nothing at the end, that was just trying… to stop my muscles from cramping.”
The Democratic senator estimated that he stopped eating on Friday in preparation for his day-long protest of Trump administration funding cuts and personnel layoffs, Raju reported.
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"And then to stop drinking the night before I started on Monday,” Booker said. “And that had its benefits, and it had its really downsides. And so instead of figuring out how to go bathroom, I ended up, I think really, unfortunately, dehydrating myself.”
Booker brought his floor speech to an end shortly after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer interrupted him to let him know he’d broken the record previously held by Sen. Strom Thurmond’s (D-SC) protest of the Civil Rights Act in 1957.
"Do you know how proud America is of you?" asked Schumer, to applause.