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Sen. Cory Booker’s Republican Senate challenger had a blunt message for President Donald Trump about the war in Iran during the pair’s recent debate: ” Finish it.”
The advice drew applause during Thursday’s forum — and a ” Wow” from Booker, who then blasted former Tabernacle Deputy Mayor Justin Murphy’s remarks as the kind of ” Yahoo” foreign policy that has dragged the United States into costly wars in the Middle East.
New Jersey is a blue state that has trended redder in recent years, with President Donald Trump flipping key areas in 2024. However, 1972 was the last time a Republican won a U.S. Senate election in the state, when Sen. Clifford Case was re-elected. Sens. Nick Brady in 1982 and Jeff Chiesa in 2013 later served brief, appointed terms.
Sen. Cory Booker, left; former Tabernacle Deputy Mayor Justin Murphy, right. (Screenshot/New Jersey Globe via YouTube)
Murphy, an attorney from the Pine Barrens, earned loud applause for his response to a question about Iran when asked what he would tell Trump if the president called him for advice on the conflict.
“Finish that war in a positive manner,” Murphy replied firmly. “We can’t wait halfway through and decide we don’t want to do this anymore. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a radical terrorist organization that has deprived the Iranian people, the Persian people, of their history and of a decent life.”
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U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, (left) will take on Justin Murphy (right) who won the U.S. Senate GOP primary in New Jersey Tuesday night (Jersy Justin For Senate/Getty Images)
The exchange highlighted the candidates’ opposing approaches to the conflict, with Murphy defending Trump’s military campaign and Booker warning against another prolonged American war in the Middle East.
As Murphy continued, the broadcast’s split-screen showed Booker briefly looking down and shaking his head before pursing his lips for the rest of Murphy’s response and raising his eyebrows at one point.
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A Welcome to New Jersey sign at the New York state line entering New Jersey. (Najlah Feanny/Corbis via Getty Images)
“Four decades is enough. The Iranian people have suffered enough,” Murphy began to conclude.
“And I would say, ‘Mr. President, put your cowboy hat on and get out there and kick some a–, and get this done and done right’,” Murphy said.
“Wow,” Booker mouthed as moderator David Wildstein gestured toward the Democrat and said it appeared he wanted to respond.
“Honestly,” Booker began. “This is the kind of ‘Yahoo’ foreign policy that has mired us in Middle East war after Middle East war — with false bravado leaders saying we’re just going to go in there and kick ass. Well, you know what that’s done to the treasury of our country?” Booker replied.
When asked the same question as Murphy, Booker joked that Wildstein was asking him about “a guy calling me for advice who has literally said ‘I know more than my generals’.”
But the former Newark mayor entertained the hypothetical, saying he and the rest of New Jersey have known Trump for years because he “bankrupted our casinos” — referring to the president’s former Atlantic City casino businesses.
He accused Trump of frequently ignoring advice, claiming advisers had to “jangle keys” to keep him on topic during a meeting about the trans-Hudson rail tunnel project spearheaded by Booker and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
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Murphy also received attention for his comments during the debate on illegal immigration. He recounted leaving a campaign event in Washington, N.J., and looking across at a home where a child was allegedly abducted and raped by Guatemalan illegal immigrant Lester Noe Perez-Amador — whom the Biden administration previously released after a Texas county notified ICE that it had taken him into custody, according to WRNJ.
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Besides putting a Republican running for a long-held blue seat on the social media radar, the exchange over Iran underscored sharp divisions across party lines and within the Republican Party over Trump’s military campaign and how it should end.
Born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, worked in both the New York and Washington bureaus for Fox News since 2013.