MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Interview
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MADDOW: She did make it all the way through.
Joining us now for "The Interview" is a much warmer, indoor version of Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. As of yesterday, she`s the newest candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Senator, thank you.
KLOBUCHAR: Well, thank you. I hadn`t seen that feed. I see what happened. Your mouth freezes.
MADDOW: I am tough enough. I sure am.
(LAUGHTER)
KLOBUCHAR: It was cold.
MADDOW: You knew it was going to be cold.
KLOBUCHAR: Yes.
MADDOW: You were warning people that it was going to be heavy wind chill (ph) --
KLOBUCHAR: Yes.
MADDOW: Did you know that you were going to have snow actually piling up on you while you stand?
KLOBUCHAR: No, I did not. In fact, when it later watched the clip, it felt like I was watching myself age in 20 minutes because my hair got whiter and whiter and whiter.
MADDOW: Right.
KLOBUCHAR: And we didn`t know it was going to snow that much that day and we had all these big campfires actually. It was like some kind of Nordic festival and 5,000 cups of cocoa and cider. And so, we told people, 5,000 hand warmers, we would have these things if they got cold and that helped to get people there.
But no one had any idea. I talked to one, Walter Mondale, an hour before, he wasn`t in town and he said, you`re not doing it outside? I said yes.
It was just really important to me to announce my candidacy with the people. We have a strong tradition of that in Minnesota. Go back to Humphrey and to Paul Wellstone, and also to do it by that river because the bridge collapsed and we rebuilt it in this incredible sense of community that we had during that time, but also because I thought it was a symbol of crossing the river of our divide, which Donald Trump, of course, has helped create.
MADDOW: I was interested to see you put the bridge collapse really at the sort of emotional heart of the start of your speech. In part because you are very well-known and beloved figure in Minnesota politics, at least based on the margins by which you keep winning reelection but you`re not nationally known. So, to put a story, a Minnesota story like that, a hometown story like that right at the heart of why you`re trying to run, it felt like the idea there must be that what works in Minnesota can work for the country, and I believe you metaphorically, but I don`t know what about that practical achievement is something that I can imagine these days happening in Washington.
KLOBUCHAR: Well, it wasn`t just about working across the aisle getting that money, which we did, and we got the bridge, this huge eight-line highway that almost doesn`t look like a bridge it`s so big. And we got that done in over a year. So, it was significant.
But for me, it was just as much about the community. It was about the semi truck driver who died because he veered away so he wouldn`t hit the school bus. The school bus goes down 30 feet and the school worker gets these kids, every one of them off to safety. The off-duty firefighter who dove in over and over again in the murky waters in these submerged cars and trucks to find survivors.
And that was a sense of community I feel is so fractured right now in our country that we need to bring back, that we need to go across that sturdy bridge to a higher ground. And so for me, the Mississippi River is more than just a river. It really is the river that runs through our heartland starting in Minnesota through Illinois, down to Missouri, way down and ends in New Orleans, that city of resilience.
So the symbolism of it was much more than just getting the funding for the project, which was a great thing and a success but for me, the river stood for more than that.
MADDOW: And you mentioned in announcing that you`re going to run, you talked about making the announcement from the Mississippi from the heartland and -- I mean, there is practical politics there, too. I mean, we`ve got other members of the Senate who are running already. We have Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, Kamala Harris from California, Julian Castro from Texas, Kirsten Gillibrand from New York, Cory Booker from New Jersey.
KLOBUCHAR: Great people.
MADDOW: People who are your colleagues, you presumably get along well with.
KLOBUCHAR: Yes.
MADDOW: All of those people are from the edge of the country and you`re running from the center of the country. And it seems to me like that must have factored into your decision about whether or not to run, because as you say, you like all those people. It can`t be that you can`t think there aren`t enough qualified people running.
KLOBUCHAR: Not at all.
MADDOW: But you think someone needs to run from the middle of the country.
KLOBUCHAR: I do. And I also think when you look at what happened in this last 2018 election, incredible victories in places like Kansas. I spoke at their Democratic dinner where Laura Kelly beat Kris Kobach. I mean, who thought that was going to happen? But she was so strong.
Wisconsin, that we beat Scott Walker. You look at all of the victories in the congressional races all over the country, and a lot of that was about people unifying, a lot of the focus, of course, was preexisting conditions and Republicans` attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and kick people off their health insurance.
But we work together as a party and much of that was going on in the Midwest and we wanted to take back the spirit of the Democratic Party in the Midwest. Minnesota is a great place to start. As you know, we are the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, DFL. And that was done to unify our party and I have won every congressional district including Michele Bachmann`s. Every single time I`ve run and worked hard to work with people in the rural areas so we don`t have that divide.
MADDOW: When -- and I was looking back at the Trump-Clinton results in your state in Minnesota in 2016 and Hillary Clinton did win the state narrowly. But you look at the electoral math county by county and congressional by congressional district, and it`s a lot of red on that map, and she won basically with her urban turnout there. You as you said, won every congressional district in the state. Is that because you have run as a moderate?
Should people who are just learning about you for the first same see you as a lot of press is describing today, as a more moderate or more centrist Democrat in this field?
KLOBUCHAR: I think they should see me as a progressive, because I believe in progress. And I have worked towards progress my while life, whether it was as a county attorney working with the Innocence Project to bring in new form of eyewitness ID into our county and advocating for videotape interrogations, whether it`s what I did as a senator when I`m on the front line pushing for protection of the democracy. You look at what happened in the Clinton-Trump race and we`re finding out more and more and more about how Russia undermined that election, and tried to hack it and put out propaganda.
And so, those Democratic reforms, including advocating for every young person being able to be registered to vote when they turn 18, that would be a great bill to get done.
MADDOW: Senator Amy Klobuchar, I would hope you will stay with us. I have lots of things to ask you about including things that people are saying about you that are very nice and things that people are saying about you that are not nice.
KLOBUCHAR: That happens when you run for office.
MADDOW: Yes, it does. I find out that it also happens when you become an adult. Much to my chagrin.
KLOBUCHAR: There you go.
MADDOW: We`ll be right back with Senator Amy Klobuchar who has just announced that she`s a candidate for president of the United States.
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MADDOW: Back with us now for "The Interview" is Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who`s a newly announced candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Senator, thank you for staying with us.
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.
MADDOW: Late last month, "The Minneapolis Star Tribune" interviewed a bunch of Iowa voters about you. Voters told "The Star Trib" that they like you. They say you`re smart. They love the job you did questioning Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
However, they do not necessarily want you to run for president. Why? One voter expressed quote concerns about whether your skin is thick enough for how hard the battle will be.
Another said flatly, you can`t win because you`re too nice. That voter said, quote: They will run right over her.
How do you defend people saying they like you too much to want you to run for president?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, I think part of that is the nature of our politics, right? So, people think how could someone who`s more from a normal background run for a job like this?
And I would say look at me out in the snow. I`ve always had grit. I`ve been the first woman to run for and for winning both of the jobs that I have held.
And when I`ve gotten to the Senate, whether it was getting that money for that bridge that I had to stay in my desk and not move to get it done, because they weren`t including it in a bill or whether it is taking on the pharmaceutical companies where I passed the bill that dealt with drug shortages, which no one thought was possible. We only had two people on it when I started. Or whether it`s introducing all these bills to take on the pharmaceutical industry on prices. I have always taken on tough fights, and I usually win them -- maybe not right away, but eventually.
MADDOW: And the other side of this scrutiny that you`re getting, as you decided to run, so there`s been a flurry of stories, particularly in the "Huffington Post" and in "BuzzFeed", saying that you are an exceedingly tough boss, maybe too tough that has resulted in too much turnover in your Senate office and that your temperament with your own staff members is beyond demanding.
How do you a feel about those stories?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, I love my staff. And I wouldn`t be up on that stage like I was yesterday without a great staff, without a great campaign that we have put together. And also, without a staff that helped me to pass all the bills and worked with me over the years.
And a number of them -- I wish those stories also will come out -- my chief of staff has been with me for five years. My state director for seven years. My campaign manager for 12 years.
So, we do have that consistency and many of them have gone on to do incredible things. Jake Sullivan, I brought him to Washington. He became the chief policy person for Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. His brother Tom was with me five years. Did the same thing for John Kerry.
I was teasing President Obama the other day. They have hired -- the White House hired over 20 of my staff members. You only have about 25 in a Senate office. A number of them have been coming back to me after they were over there.
So, that`s my story. I know I can be too tough sometimes and I can push too hard. That`s obvious, but a lot of it is because I have high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for the people that work with me.
And, mostly, I`m going to take the high expectations and bring them out to the country because if we want to really get these things done, some of these things should happen. Some of these things there`s even bipartisan support, like doing something about drug prices or getting something done on climate change, which is just literally regressing under the Trump administration and ice sheets are melting and the fires are raging out in Colorado and in California. And I will bring those high expectations to the country.
MADDOW: When you talk about your staff, the staff situation -- I also feel like for me as somebody that`s talked to you a lot over the years, you`ve been on this show a number of times and I`ve tracked your career ever since you were in the Senate, it struck me also as the first time you`ve really had a round of bad press, and there is the substantive matter of allegations which you just discussed. I also am interested about how you feel just in terms of your appetite for being -- for getting the inevitable derisive nickname from the president, for being trashed in the press fairly and also unfairly. I mean, there will be legitimate oppo and there`ll be illegitimate oppo against you.
I mean, how do you gird yourself for that and have you ever had to deal with it before?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, my whole life I dealt with adversity. My dad growing up and I brought this up at the Kavanaugh hearing, while he`s not longer drinking at age 91 -- 90, he struggled with that his whole life and I grew up with that. I had to deal when my daughter was born, she was really sick.
And I just always believed that if you see obstacles just as obstacles, you`re not going to get through them. But you see them as the path and your way forward, that`s your path. That`s how I treated that. And I`m used to -- by the way, you`re not a prosecutor for eight years running in office with hundreds of lawyers and with murder cases and everything else without dealing with adversity and difficult decisions, and the same thing in the United States Senate.
So I might have maybe a little more happy demeanor than some of my colleagues, but it doesn`t mean that I`m not steely and tough and can deal with it.
MADDOW: You mentioned -- you were teasing President Obama the other day. Did you -- have you spoken with President about your plans to run?
KLOBUCHAR: Yes, I have, as have I think a number of candidates. I can`t think of a better person to get advice from and he seems, by the way, in a very good mood and working on his book and so proud of what Michelle has been doing.
MADDOW: Did he tell you you should run?
KLOBUCHAR: I`m not going to say. He has been -- he gave me very good advice. So --
MADDOW: All right. I`m going to try to pry that out of you during the commercial break and then come back and say that you wouldn`t tell me.
Senator Amy Klobuchar will join us with one more segment when we come back. Stay with us.
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MADDOW: We`re joined again for "The Interview" by Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She`s now in the first full day of her 2020 presidential campaign.
Senator, thank you for being here.
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.
MADDOW: I`ll just cut to the chase. She couldn`t tell me anything juicy during the commercial break.
Let me ask you about something that I`ve never talked to you about and I have no idea where you stand on it, and that is the issue of these nuclear treaties. In my entire adult lifetime, we have always had some sort of treaty with Russia, with the other great nuclear power on earth that regulates the size of our nuclear arsenal, the types of nuclear weapons that we can have, the rate at which they can be built and they must be destroyed.
The president appears to be steaming toward an outcome where there is not going to be any more nuclear treaties with Russia. That`s -- they have couched this in the administration as some sort of punishment against Russia. But the end state is very scary to me.
KLOBUCHAR: It is.
MADDOW: What is your take?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, you look what happened and then Putin announces he`s going to move forward and I am certain that Russia has not always been honest with how they have handled these treaties, and you have to keep pushing them. But for the president after having that memorable meeting where he basically dissed his own intelligence forces in terms of their assessment of what had gone on during the election with Russia, then he announces, well, we`re going to get out of this treaty.
And I just don`t think we should be doing that. I think we should be tough negotiators with Russia but our country has to stand as a beacon of democracy and to me, that means staying in the international climate change agreement. I announced yesterday that would be, I would do that on day one. Get our country back into that agreement. That means not balking on the Iran nuclear agreement.
Again, another number one fear and that agreement may not have been perfect, but now the European countries are struggling with how to make sure it keeps being enforced so that Iran doesn`t develop a nuclear weapon. And so yes, you can make changes to things and negotiate things. But to me, it is -- we must stand with our allies, we must be consistent with our foreign policy and we must listen to our troops, listen to what the military is saying, listen to the intelligence officers and another example when he announced he`s pulling troops out of Syria, without any real warning at all to the allies or to his own administration.
And those things are all examples where he seems to conduct foreign policy by tweet and I don`t think that`s what we should be doing.
MADDOW: Do you have views on whether or not U.S. troops somebody in Syria in any sort of long run or in Afghanistan in an ongoing way?
KLOBUCHAR: The hope is that we will be bringing them home and I, of course, don`t have privy to the intelligence right now that he has, but I would not have suddenly pulled those troops out of Syria like he did, and leave the Kurds who have stood by our side. But eventually, yes, of course, we have to bring them home.
MADDOW: In terms of the president and his foreign policy agenda and the way things work in this administration, usually with the president, you talk about what the president wants to do because that is going to be what we do. With this president, there is an expression of what he wants to do and then what we actually do as a government is sometimes different.
So, for example, the president announced there would be tough sanctions, new sanctions on Russia because of the Skripals poisoning, the nerve agent poisoning in the U.K. Apparently, his administration never followed through with actually enacting any of those sanctions.
Similarly, Congress passed a law saying that the Khashoggi murder has to be addressed by the administration. The administration has to assess whether or not there was Saudi government responsibility for that. They appeared to have just blown through it and decided they are not going to do it.
Does that sort of behavior by this president make Republicans see him as a different kind of president, not just a Republican but perhaps somebody who they, even as Republican members of Congress, may be ought to have issues with?
KLOBUCHAR: Yes. And, of course, they say that behind closed doors.
MADDOW: They do.
KLOBUCHAR: As you pointed out, I do talk to a lot of Republicans in terms of working on legislation together and I find common ground where I can. But that`s what they say behind closed doors and sometimes they stand up. You look at what Senator Flake did before he left and some of what Senator McCain did before we sadly lost him. There was -- there were people standing up. And I want to see that again.
You see murmurs of it from Senator Romney, and from time to time, you see it from Senator Graham. But we need more people to stand up because this is about our own democracy. We know that Russia tried to undermine our election and, yet, Senator Lankford and I still can`t pass our bill for backup paper ballots that I`m leading that Senator Harris and Senator Graham are also part of.
MADDOW: Bipartisan legislation.
KLOBUCHAR: We can`t pass the bill for having audits of these elections, and this is going to be really important as we go into 2020, that we make sure this election is protected so that what happened to Hillary Clinton never happens again.
MADDOW: Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota running for president as of this weekend. Again, my big question for you was why you would run. I know why you would run. From hearing you announce, from hearing you talk tonight, I know why you`re running. I can see the passion that you bring to this.
If you end up not becoming president of the United States, I hope that you`ll stay in public life forever. I don`t -- I mean, I just think you are a -- you`re one of the people in this line of work who is the easiest person I`ve talked to in a long time, but you`ve also just done a lot of good in public life thus far. It`s exciting to see what you can do in the next level.
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you. We`re going to win. Thank you.
MADDOW: Amy Klobuchar.
KLOBUCHAR: All right.
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