CNN "Anderson Cooper 360" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Interview

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Joining us now, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota. Senator Klobuchar, good to see you.

The President is calling efforts to restrict voting on an unprecedented assault on our democracy? Is that how you see it?

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): I do, and I chair the Rules Committee in the Senate and I had to listen to the arguments made by Republican senators, including that putting some basic Federal minimum standards in place so that people can vote safely how they choose, whether its vote by mail or voting early, they oppose that. They claimed it would create chaos.

Chaos is people standing in garbage bags in homemade masks in the rain in Milwaukee, just waiting to vote or chaos is one voting drop off box in the middle of Harris County, Texas, with over five million people. Chaos is what you saw in Georgia when the former President or as you call him, the man from Mar-a-Lago when the former President literally went after election officials, Democrats, Republicans, you name it and put them at personal risk. That is chaos.

And that is why you see growing public support for the For the People Act, including for the provisions on money and dark money and getting that out of our politics and including on the ethics reform. That's a third pillar of the bill.

COOPER: I mean, all this talk about drop boxes and limiting drop boxes. Is there any evidence that you have seen that drop boxes pose a great risk for voter fraud.

KLOBUCHAR: No. This is just another example to quote, Reverend Warnock, who, in his moving maiden floor speech on the Senate -- in the Senate said, this is just about one simple thing. It is some people don't want some people to vote. And most parties when they lose a major election, they change their policies. They figure out how they can reach out to voters better, they change their candidates.

What these guys are doing right now is they're trying to change the voters. They're saying, hey, we didn't like when eight million more people voted federally, we want to make it harder to vote. We're going to roll back some of those provisions that you didn't have to get a notary and have it -- and sign it through a window of a hospital room when you had COVID just to be able to cast your vote.

Those are the kinds of arguments I dealt with on the committee. We got the tied vote we needed. I know that sounds like a small thing, Anderson, but it allows the procedure to take place where Senator Schumer can ultimately get this bill to the floor where I will be advocating and leading the effort along with Senator Merkley to get this done.

COOPER: You heard President Biden kind of taking a poke it at your Senate Democratic colleagues presumably Senators Manchin and Sinema acknowledging the unlikelihood of getting voting rights legislation passed as long as the filibuster is in place.

Do you believe the filibuster should be abolished? And if not, how can Democrats get stuff done?

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KLOBUCHAR: I believe it should be abolished. It should be abolished because it is an archaic procedure that was put in place basically, many, many years ago used to try to stop Civil Rights legislation being used again, being used just last week to stop the January 6 Commission, where we could have done a thorough review that we need to do to look at the insurrection. And I guess, these guys are into somehow an endless insurrection at this point, and that's why we need to change the rules.

I'll note that Senator Manchin has signaled a willingness to look at a standing filibuster, which would be very, very different, it would force our colleagues to not hide behind their desk, but to get out there and have to speak day after day, if they want to stop this bill in its tracks.

We also have a number of reforms to give Secretary of States both Democrat and Republican that they asked me to do in the bill, I put together this big manager's package that basically was responding to a lot of concerns from West Virginia, but the Republicans voted it down.

And Joe Manchin is very well aware of the work we've done to try to and what we could do to make changes to the bill.

So I would stay tuned. Once we get it to the floor, it is going to be a jump-all, Anderson, and we need to get this done.

COOPER: What do you hope is the next step? Or is there a next step on the idea of some sort of a commission looking into the insurrection?

KLOBUCHAR: That was one of the saddest days, the fact that we had I think about six Republicans vote with us to move that along, and there are many ways and Speaker Pelosi has outlined these, the President could appoint a commission, you could also have a number of committees deal with it, or they could have some kind of select commission.

I'm open to all those ideas at this point and also open to revisiting the 9/11, but stay tuned, because next week, Senator Peters, Senator Portman, and Blunt and I are putting out our report. It's not a substitute for a 9/11-style commission about January 6, but it has very pointed recommendations and changes that need to be made, the Capitol Police Board changes we have to make legally so that this never happens again.

And there were very -- two very long public hearings on this, where Democrats and Republicans got a chance to ask questions, and we also questioned witnesses in the last few months. So I will be coming out with that. But again, it is no substitute for a 9/11-style commission.

COOPER: Just finally, what your Democratic colleague in the House Congresswoman Luria about these comments by Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former National Security Adviser, retired three-star General. She called it sedition. Do you think it is?

KLOBUCHAR: I can see why she did. I mean he basically is advocating a military coup. He said, oh, that could happen here. I would note that the man from Mar-a-Lago, my new phrase that I learned from you, has basically pardoned General Flynn. He gave him a pardon of all of his offenses. And now you've got him out there engaged in what I call an endless insurrection.

He is continuing to question our democracy, to question the pillars of our democracy. And all of the questions that we've talked about today, Anderson, the failure to do a 9/11-style Commission on January 6, the failure to be willing to do something that's always been bipartisan, which is reforms to our elections to make them work better.

The endorsement basically, of a military coup, this is what is so scary about our democracy right now and I just refuse to believe that we are going to allow an archaic Senate provision called the filibuster get in the way of standing up for our democracy.

This is as Joe Biden said today, this is an assault on our democracy and we must respond and I don't think this is just Democrats talking. I think it is Republicans and Independents.

And I'll just end with this on this, Trevor Potter, the former Chair of the Federal Election Commission, under George Bush is a fervently strong supporter of the For the People Act. He testified for me on this bill at our hearing, because he believes that the dark money from the outside and what's going on with our voting rights, at some point, we stand up for democracy and that's what matters the most.

COOPER: Senator Klobuchar, appreciate it. Thank you.

KLOBUCHAR: Thanks, Anderson. It was great to be on.

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