MSNBC "The Beat with Ari Melber" - Transcript: Interview with Amy Klobuchar

Interview

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REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): I`m great, Ari.

Cornell, great to see you.

MELBER: Great to have you both together.

What`s your thoughts on all of the above and whether Mitch McConnell, whether you want to call it being true to his own form, or doubling down, or supersizing his turtle vibes towards Biden? Is there something that should be done about this now, given the scale and the scope of what lies ahead for America, at a time where there`s a lot of stuff to be done?

JAYAPAL: Well, first of all, this is Mitch McConnell.

I mean, if we had any doubt, this is who Mitch McConnell has been. This is who he is today. It is who he will be in the future. He is all about blocking. So, don`t give me this bipartisan stuff that he keeps putting out there and other Republicans keep putting out there.

Democrats need to learn from what happened in 2009. I was not here in Congress back then. I was on the outside and saying, come on, Democrats, just move, because the only thing this guy has is to stop progress for the American people.

So we need to be moving forward as quickly as possible, because he has now laid all of the cards on the table as far as what the Republican agenda is.

Secondly, on the filibuster, we are this week doing a national week of action the filibuster, eliminating or reforming the filibuster, which is designed to have members of Congress -- and we have over 20 events across the country led by members of Congress -- to educate our constituents on, what is the filibuster? It`s not the "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and stays up all night and does something to go up against the establishment.

This is about the tyranny of the minority, something that the founders never wanted, were very clear that they never wanted. They always wanted the majority to rule, not the supermajority. They did not want the minority to be able to stop things.

And this is a relic of the Jim Crow era. This is what Southern segregationists used to stop progress on civil rights. Now, this is the same tool that Mitch McConnell wants to use to control the Senate. So, tomorrow, we will be having a national progressive town hall with Senator Padilla, with Derrick Johnson from the NAACP, Cori Bush, Sean Casten, not just progressives, but people across the caucus, who know that the urgency that Cornell talked about is what is at stake here.

There`s an urgency around policing and passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. There`s an urgency around voting rights and passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, an urgency around immigration reform, around a $15 minimum wage, around democracy reform and H.R.1.

These are all bills that have already passed the House. And we need to pass them in the Senate and have the president sign them, because, at the end of the day, the American people are hurting. We have been through a dark, miserable year, year-and-a-half, four years, if you think about the Trump administration.

And we need to have help to people. And it`s significant that the majority of Americans support the American Jobs and Families Plan, just as they did the Rescue Plan.

MELBER: And, Congresswoman, do you think people know what the roadblock is?

JAYAPAL: I think people don`t understand, nor do they care about the procedural pieces of why something can`t get done.

And so that is why Mitch McConnell during the Obama years picked up on that, because he knew that, if you go back, as Democrats, that got everyone to come out and vote for you and give you a House majority, a Senate majority, and a White House, that if you went back and said, well, I`m really sorry, but this -- there`s this dead guy, Byrd, and there`s a rule, and the parliamentarian, who`s unelected, has to rule on whether or not we can pass something, and the bottom line is we don`t have anything to deliver, nobody`s really going to care much about that.

And so Mitch McConnell understood that, and he understands it today. And it`s why I think we can educate people about it through the issues that they care about, and then show that the process is just a relic of Jim Crow era, and that Democrats have the power to reform it, just as the Republicans changed it for Supreme Court majorities and for taxes.

I mean, the only reason the Trump tax got passed is because of this reconciliation provision, so -- that says you don`t need 60 votes for their Trump tax cuts, for these budget items, but -- and you don`t need it for Supreme Court justices, but somehow you need it for voting rights or for any of these other things that we care about.

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