MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Tim Kaine

Interview

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SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): Rachel, it`s great to be with you and especially to follow Barbara because she`s been just so fantastic on this issue. Juneteenth and AUMF repeal, she needs to buy a lottery ticket before midnight tonight, I think today is a very lucky day for her.

MADDOW: Senator, she said that she has talked to you about what happens here next. As I -- as I mention, I feel like the partisan lines don`t map neatly unto this issue, either in terms of using military force in specific instances, or the idea of these open-ended authorizations when it never has to come back to Congress and we essentially cede that power to the president in a way that the Constitution didn`t mean for us to do.

Because it doesn`t have neat partisan lines, and neat partisan mapping, I do feel like these things are hard to predict in the Senate. Do you share Congressman Lee`s cautious optimism that this repeal is going to pass the Senate, too?

KAINE: Rachel, I do. I`m not so cautious. I think we`re going to get a great vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. I have a co-sponsor in this effort to repeal, both the Iraq War resolutions, 1991 in 2002. Congress passes these war resolutions and never repeals them, and they float out there in space like zombies that can be used by mischief making executives to do damage.

So, it was a historical vote in the House because Congress doesn`t have a track record of repealing these. But together with Todd Young, Todd Young, constitutional conservation Indiana, marine veteran, he is my chief cosponsor on this bill. If you think about Barbara Lee, who`s one of the most progressive members of Congress, Todd Young, constitutional conservative, I`m 63 years old and I still haven`t figured out the label for myself, but I think that we have a great path to a strong bipartisan vote on Tuesday, and then we have both the House bill that Barbara has championed, our Senate bill and then we are writing the defense authorizing right now and that might also be in place to put the repeal of the Iraq resolution.

So, we have a couple of vehicles. We`re going to have to talk about the fastest way to get this to Joe Biden`s desk. But this will be a big historic step, and you wrote a book about it in 2012, your book "Drift" about the way we have switched from Congress declares war, the legislative branch, no other country doesn`t like that, but that`s what our framers decided would be best. We drifted to unilateral executive wars and that`s been to our nation`s detriment. This is about Article One branch trying to pull some of this power back to the way it was intended to be.

MADDOW: Because of that -- first of all, thank you for plugging my book, I`m not sure this might be a first in a cable news history where the guest plugs the host`s book. This is man bites a dog. But I will say, because of that dynamic that we were describing, that basic constitutional dynamic which I think is at play here, it seems to me like a dispositive thing, like a really important positive thing that President Biden supports doing this.

I mean, the beneficiary of these open-ended authorizations where military force can be used anywhere in the world indefinitely without ever having to come back to Congress for their say so, the beneficiary of that is the commander-in-chief you can order military action without having to consult with Congress. For a president to say, you know at, I should not have that power in an open-ended way, we should return it to the way that the Constitution intended these authorizations should be ended, and if we need a new one for a specific reason we will pass it then and it won`t be open- ended. That she seems like a counterintuitive thing for a president to agree to.

Was that essentially the spark to finally get this done after all the debate that you and congresswoman lee have led on this after all these years?

KAINE: I would say, you know, Barbara has been a spark and I praised Todd Young, my Republican colleague. But I think the ingredient that really has been key is Joe Biden. And what I would say is Joe Biden`s confidence and his competence.

No one who has been president of the United States since LBJ has understood more the powers of the Article One branch, Congress, than Joe Biden. I mean, 36 years in the Senate, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and it takes an extremely self confident president to say, I want to inhabit any square centimeter of the Article Two powers, but I`m not threatened by a Congress inhabiting every square centimeter of the Article One powers.

Most presidents feel threatened when Congress starts to exert some interest in war power issues. Joe Biden doesn`t feel threatened, he understands Congress has to be as vigorous in protective of Article One powers as the president is of Article Two powers.

So I think we will successfully repeal the zombie Iraq authorizations 1991 and 2002. My hope is by September, the 20th anniversary of the 2001 authorization to which war on non-state terrorist groups who attacked us, I think we will hopefully reach a handshake deal with the White House about the way to more narrowly described and to describe to the American public and provide limits on our actions against non state terrorist groups.

And we`re working very closely with the White House. It`s just night and data have a White House that wants to work on this versus once that sees it as a threat to their own prerogatives.

MADDOW: Right. Exactly, one who not only understands the constitutional prerogatives but isn`t insecure about them. It is amazing how much progress you can make once you drop that.

Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine who has led and educated I think on this issue for so long, sir, this is a big step forward and I`m sure the next few days are going to be very interesting as it heads to the Senate. Keep us apprised. Thanks for helping us out tonight.

KAINE: Thanks, Rachel. Good to talk to you.

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