Over Memorial Day weekend, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) tried to say something nice about her late colleague John McCain. She somehow ended up in a feud with his daughter Meghan.
“On behalf of the entire McCain family,” The View host Meghan McCain tweeted at the 2020 presidential candidate, “please be respectful to all of us and leave my fathers legacy and memory out of presidential politics.”
So when Klobuchar sat down for the first time with Jimmy Kimmel Tuesday night, he had to ask for her response. “Now you told a story at one of these rallies this weekend that I found so interesting about the late Senator John McCain,” Kimmel said before recounting the senator’s story about how McCain “began reciting the names of dictators” to Klobuchar and Sen. Bernie Sanders during Trump's inauguration speech.”
“He was referencing parts of the speech and mentioning dictator’s speeches,” Klobuchar clarified. Asked if he was doing it to make them laugh, she replied, “No, he was doing it because of his concern about what this meant with this president.” She also said that Adolf Hitler was not included in McCain’s list.
“Well Trump’s gotta be flattered about that,” Kimmel replied. “Hitler didn’t make it.”
“I think the point of the story was that John McCain was a student of history and so he knew what was coming,” Klobuchar told him, trying to move the conversation in a more serious direction. “He knew these cries for isolationism, what that meant if we don't stand with our allies, what that meant for America’s standing in the world. And that’s what he was doing. He had said things similar to this publicly as well.”
Kimmel began his interview by asking Klobuchar why she was running for the Democratic nomination. “I mean, there are so many people running for president,” he said. “Is it one of those things where you look at Donald Trump and you go, I could certainly do that? Did he inspire you in a way?”
“Well, of course he did,” Klobuchar said before trying out a joke: “It’s good to sit down with someone who’s not running for president.”
Kimmel also spent time praising the senator for some of the health-care initiatives she put forward that were inspired by her own daughter’s medical issues as well as her father’s struggles with alcoholism.
“Will this mental health assistance be available to our commander in chief as well?” Kimmel asked her. “Do you think the president is crazy?”
“I think that the president is not doing his job for this country,” she answered. “I think that he is inconsistent. He’s governing by chaos. He is someone that divides people, every single morning, he sends out a tweet—to me, as a leader, you bring people together.”
“Instead, he likes to create these wedges to keep his base happy, going after immigrants, going after people of color, going after John McCain,” she continued, dropping the late senator’s name once more. “Sending out a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi. These are not things that a good, strong leader does.”
“So yeah, he’s crazy,” Kimmel added.