Ted Cruz on how to withstand marathon speech on Senate floor: “Nothing in, nothing out”

As Sen. Cory Booker delivered a marathon speech on the Senate floor in protest of President Trump’s policies, questions emerged about how the New Jersey Democrat was surviving the feat of endurance without going to the bathroom. 

His colleague, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who delivered a speech lasting 21 hours and 19 minutes in 2013, which Booker surpassed Tuesday afternoon, had some advice. 

“The most frequent question I would get about it is, OK, what do you do about going to the bathroom? And you can’t you can’t leave the Senate floor. And and the very simple answer is: Nothing in, nothing out,” Cruz told CBS News on Tuesday. 

Cruz said he had one small glass of water during his speech against the Affordable Care Act. 

“If you drink very little, you can last a long time,” he said. 

Booker didn’t ask Cruz for any advice before he began his speech around 7 p.m. Monday, the Texas Republican said. 

But Cruz said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in 2013 gave him the advice about water intake and also told him to wear comfortable shoes. 

“Rand had done an 11-hour filibuster earlier that year,” Cruz said. “He said what beat him was not his legs ultimately, but it was his bladder.” 

For his speech, Cruz traded the black cowboy boots he usually wears for tennis shoes.

Booker addressed needing to use the bathroom soon after he made history delivering the longest speech on Senate record, surpassing Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour-and-18-minute address in 1957. Booker said he would go on for just a bit longer because he had to “deal with biological urgencies” he was feeling. 

Kris Van Cleave

Emmy Award-winning journalist Kris Van Cleave is the senior transportation correspondent for CBS News based in Phoenix, Arizona, where he also serves as a national correspondent reporting for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms.