CNN "State Of The Union With Jake Tapper" - Transcript "Interview with Sen. Amy Klobuchar"

Interview

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: And joining me now is Democratic presidential candidate and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

KLOBUCHAR: Great to be on, Jake. Thank you.

TAPPER: First of all, your reaction to Secretary Pompeo and the news that President Trump was going to have the Taliban and the president of Afghanistan come to Camp David for some sort of negotiations? And now he has canceled that, although there is still the potential for the peace talks to continue.

KLOBUCHAR: Well, like so many leaders, I spent last night trying to figure out the meaning of the president's tweet.

To me, this is just no way to conduct foreign policy. Yes, we should be negotiating with the Afghan government and we should be negotiating with the Taliban to try to end the bloodshed in this country that has been going on for decades.

The whole focus of this, of course, is to bring our troops home, which I strongly support. But this time, you see again that he has some kind of hastily arranged summit, which no one knew was happening. OK.

But he didn't even seem to have an agreement or even close to an agreement when he set the summit.

Then the excuse that's used to end the summit and take it down is the fact that, tragically, an American service member died, as well as other civilians.

But then they kept negotiating after that happened through Saturday. So, the whole thing doesn't quite make sense to me. And it's just another example of the president treating foreign policy like it's some kind of game show.

This isn't a game show. These are terrorists. And, yes, you want to try to end the bloodshed and talk to them and see if an agreement can be met. And you want to do it with our allies. And you want to keep those hard-fought democratic reforms in place.

But the way he conducts foreign policy -- this me exactly of North Korea. He loves the showmanship. He wants to have that moment, but then all the details aren't done, and then we end up in a worse place on the world stage than we were before.

TAPPER: Would you -- would a President Klobuchar ever be willing to have the Taliban come to Camp David?

[09:20:01]

KLOBUCHAR: If you had an ironclad agreement, you could look at anything.

To me, that didn't seem like the right venue to have this agreement made. That was my first reaction. You don't want to rule anything out, but the main point here is that you want to have an agreement, you want to have it done with your allies, you want to make sure that you're ready to go.

This is a very fluid situation. The president of Afghanistan, which is our ally here, they are going to have an election in the fall. And the president has been doing these negotiations. Fine. I think most people have not questioned that we want to bring our troops home. I want to bring our troops home.

It's just the way he does it. You think about trade policy, where he says he's going to slap a bunch of tariffs on, on August 1, and then for $300 billion, August 12, they take back half of them.

The next day, he says he's going to reduce taxes. Then he changes his mind.

The world is watching. China is watching. Russia is watching. They realize the weakness that this creates when we don't have consistency.

There is this old saying in foreign policy and in trade negotiation, keep your promises and keep your threats. He keeps neither.

TAPPER: So, I want to ask you about gun control, which has become a big issue on the campaign trail for Democrats.

Senator Kamala Harris has proposed a ban on importing semiautomatic weapons, called assault weapons. Former Congressman Beto Beto O'Rourke has called for basically a -- a -- well, conservatives call it gun confiscation. He calls it a mandatory federal buyback program for the same weapons.

Do you support either of those proposals?

KLOBUCHAR: What I support is an immediate assault weapon ban, so we can't keep purchasing them.

And in a number of these mass shootings, the perpetrators, the murderers have actually gone out in the last year, the last two years, got them online.

And so, to me, that would be the most immediately smart thing to do. You can't do any of this without that.

TAPPER: But not a mandatory buyback, not a...

KLOBUCHAR: I would look at a voluntary buyback for certain, and I think you would do that with the government and the private sector combined to get the funds to do that, and then you go from there. You could look at the other, but I would start with the voluntary. And the other thing I would do is get the magazine limitations in

place. Those things are going to make a big difference. And you can't do these other things unless you put in the assault weapons ban, because they're going to keep buying them.

The other thing that's the most important, Jake -- and I think you know this -- is what's happening next week, three sensible bills on Mitch McConnell's desk, one, universal background checks, which the facts seem to indicate could have prevented that horrible killing in Odessa and Midland, since that man had failed the background check once, and then was somehow able to get a gun.

Closing the Charleston loophole, as well as closing the boyfriend loophole, which is my bill, which is very helpful to prevent domestic homicides.

And Mitch McConnell has basically deflected to the president and a game of Whac-A-Mole, a dangerous game, and saying, well, maybe if he agrees, well, maybe if my people agree.

Show some leadership. Let these bills come up. The House passed them with some Republican support.

TAPPER: There's a new poll out today from ABC News showing that Vice President Biden remains the front-runner among Democratic voters.

I want to play some sound from Congressman Tim Ryan, who's also running for president, who's not backing down from comments he made earlier this week that -- that Biden, in his view, doesn't have the energy to beat President Trump in 2020.

Take a listen.

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REP. TIM RYAN (D-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It was a comment that I made, and that -- you know, I'm not backtracking from it. It is a concern you're hearing from a lot people in the country.

I'm just saying that there's a -- it's unclear sometimes. When he is articulating positions, there's a lack of clarity. And I'll leave it at that.

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TAPPER: Do you have any concerns about Vice President Biden's ability, if he is the nominee, to beat President Trump?

KLOBUCHAR: I'm running my own campaign.

And I think one of the reasons we have these debates is so that people can make those assessments themselves. The vice president has broad experience. And we all know that. And I think that it's just time. We're going to have to see which candidate emerges.

I don't think I'm in the place to comment. That's for the voters to decide this.

But I'll make my case. I have a lot of energy. I'm someone that never stops working. I'm someone that is from the Midwest, the area that we had the hardest place winning in, in 2016. And I have shown the ability over and over and over again.

And I don't want to be the president for half of America, Jake. I want to be the president for all of America.

To win, we don't just want to win by a little. We want to win big. That's the only way you take back the Senate, the only way that you get these things done.

My colleagues and I have been talking about gun safety and the assault weapon ban, major -- major action on climate change, immigration reform.

If Mitch McConnell is still sitting there stopping everything, we're not going to be able to advance our progress that we need for our country.

TAPPER: Thank you so much, Senator Klobuchar.

KLOBUCHAR: All right. Thank you, Jake. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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