(WASHINGTON) — Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D, said Sunday that Democrats are “moving forward” after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and passed the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl on Sunday pressed Klobuchar on comments Biden made, saying that Democrats were concerned that his presence atop the ticket this November would drag down House and Senate candidates. Klobuchar didn’t speculate on what caused Biden to step down from the 2024 presidential race but cast Harris’ candidacy as a turning of the page in the Democratic Party.
“He made the honorable decision, he took the honorable path. And for me, I am not looking in the rearview mirror about who said what, and who hurt whose feelings. For me, this is about, as Kamala Harris has said over and over again, this is about moving forward and not going backward,” Klobuchar said.
“People are interested in moving forward, and they respect President Biden. I love Joe Biden, but we are moving forward as a party and as a nation,” she said.
Klobuchar, like other Democratic lawmakers, expressed excitement about Harris’ candidacy and her selection of Tim Walz — Klobuchar’s state governor — as her running mate, swatting away attacks that the pair is too liberal to defeat former President Donald Trump.
“Kamala Harris is [a] voice of the future, but when you look at what she’s done in her life, she was a prosecutor running the biggest attorney general’s office in the United States of America. She put people behind bars. She went after murderers and rapists. So, they can try to paint her whatever way they want, but that was her North Star for many, many years,” Klobuchar said. “She is not going to let this get to her, and nor is Tim Walz, who was a fantastic choice for vice president.”
Still, Klobuchar had to play some defense for the new Democratic ticket.
Harris has not extensively talked to the media since becoming the presidential nominee, sparking criticism from Republicans — though she did say she hopes to schedule a sit-down interview with a media outlet by the end of the month.
“Twenty-one days, Jonathan, of running for president, before that she did tons of interviews. She’s done interviews with you. She’s done interviews. I’m sure she’s going to do interviews. Just last night in Nevada she talked to the press. I was reading about some of her answers. Look, she is going to talk to the press,” Klobuchar said.
Klobuchar also defended Walz, who found himself facing criticism last week over past comments suggesting he served in combat during his 24 years in the Army National Guard, even though he did not. (In a video clip tweeted out by the Harris campaign last week, Walz tells an audience that he carried guns “in war” while trying to make the case for restrictions on gun access.) Republicans also raised questions over his retirement and whether he knew his unit was going to be deployed to Iraq when he retired to run for Congress.
The Harris campaign said he misspoke about serving in a war zone, and Klobuchar and other Democrats have defended the timing of his retirement, with conflicting reports emerging over whether he was aware of the pending deployment when he made his decision in 2005.
“I think he made the decision that he was going to run for Congress, and that was his decision. He served four years longer than he would have had to serve to retire in the Guard. He stepped down simply because he made a decision to run,” Klobuchar said. “That’s why he stepped down, and it’s completely acceptable.”
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