Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., appeared to compare Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to a person who didn't stand up to the Nazis on Thursday after the pair shared a heated exchange during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week.

"If you come after Jews, if you come under Muslims, if you come after Haitians or El Salvadorans, if you come after my fellow American citizens, I will not tolerate it," Booker said on 105.71FM's "The Breakfast Club" radio show. "And she should have been in the same way, as opposed to just doing her job."

"Well, we know what happened in Europe when people just did their jobs," he added, presumably referring to Nazi Germany.



Booker tore into Nielsen on Tuesday for saying she could not recall President Trump using the phrase "shithole countries" in a White House meeting she attended earlier in January with a group of key senators regarding immigration reform.

During his maiden appearance as a member of the committee, the New Jersey Democrat said Trump's remark left him in "tears of rage," telling Nielsen her silence and amnesia constituted "complicity."

"We know what happened in our own history where people were just doing their job. It allowed the most evil kind of hate to proliferate, and we can't allow that. We must stamp that out in our country," Booker continued Thursday, saying his outburst was "consistent" with views he had held throughout his career rather than political grandstanding.

Nielsen on Wednesday stridently defended herself against claims she was untruthful when she appeared before the panel.

"I decline to spend any more of my time responding other than to say the obvious – I did not and will not lie under oath and say I heard something I didn't," Nielsen said in the statement.