Pete Buttigieg tells Stephen Colbert he has ‘enormous respect’ for Amy Klobuchar despite their tense debates
Minnesota Senator, Amy Klobuchar, and former mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, joined Stephen Colbert on yesterday night's (April 29) at home episode of 'The Late Show.' Both of them confirmed that they were at home and while Senator Klobuchar agreed to be "viciously" competitive and winning every game of Scrabble against her family, the mayor revealed he's indulging in some epic battles of Monopoly and Risk. He also jokingly mentioned that he would like to challenge Klobuchar to a game of 'Words with Friends'.
The Senator also took the time to thank healthcare workers engaged in COVID-19 related duties and mentioned that she's really "devoted to testing" and doing everything she can to "get a vaccine." She had a close brush with the coronavirus and saw first-hand how "unpredictably scary" the disease could be when her husband tested positive after coughing blood and running a 100-degree body temperature for 10 straight days. She confirmed that he's recovering well after battling severe pneumonia and low oxygen levels while spending five-six days at the hospital.
Later on, Colbert asked both the politicians to weigh in on President Donald Trump's decision to reopen the meatpacking industries since they are both Midwestern natives, a meat producing region.
Senator Klobuchar stated: "A bunch of workers have gotten really sick and I think you have got to fix that first and you have to do everything you can to get the testing and the (contact) tracing. Of course, you have got to reopen the farms because that is how farmers make a living so have to get that done. But I keep going back to the fact that when you look at other nations that have gotten on this quicker, it's all due to testing."
"The question is not whether we want to reopen, we all want to, the question is how to make sure we do it safely," added Buttigieg. He further mentioned that the plants should open because the agricultural sector needs to be up and running soon. However, he also had a burning question for Trump. While the President has been "quick to order" the meatpacking plants back in business, Buttigieg wanted to know why was he "so slow" to use these powers early on in the crisis. He mentioned this could have helped them generate more protective equipment and other things to manage the crisis better.
Colbert also asked the Senator about the letter she sent to the US Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin asking for better management of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and the program itself. "We haven't gotten a written response. I have got 21 senators in with me on this and I will say that the next day they started an audit to look at some of the loans, especially the bigger loans of over $2M," said Klobuchar.
"The problem here, of course, is that you have got be able to enforce these programs and one of the things we admired about [former] Vice President Biden is when that recovery money came out near the last downturn, he was in charge of making sure the money went to the people who were supposed to get it and there wasn't a bunch of fraud and corruption," she added.
Klobuchar also expressed disappointment over Trump firing the intelligence community's inspector general Michael Atkinson and said, "My problem with this administration, right out of the shot, [is that] the President of the United States fired the very experienced inspector general who worked under Bush and Obama, and who could have overseen a lot of this."
Meanwhile, Colbert noted that this was a "good program aimed towards employers keeping their employees working and keeping the business afloat." To this, Klobuchar added that this was a "moment of bipartisan agreement" where they came together with a goal to help people who've had their "dreams and hopes invested in their small businesses", all of which have "boarded windows" now and the senator mentioned that the goal is for them to open shop gradually but in the meantime, the priority remains for everyone to be safe.
Colbert later pointed out to the now cordial relationship of the politicos as opposed to the tense moments they shared between them during the debates in Las Vegas earlier this year. Answering Colbert's question, "What gets debated in Vegas, stays in Vegas?", Buttigieg said that he has "enormous respect" for Senator Klobuchar. He went on to draw similarities between the two and said, "What we hold together is shared values, we are the ones who believe climate change is real, ones who care about making sure workers are empowered, we are the ones who are ferociously protective about the future of our democracy."
He also commended the work that Klobuchar and the others in the Senate are doing and ensuring that everyone is able to vote.
He mentioned that even though "there is tension on the trail", the differences between them during the course of the campaign are "vanishingly small" when compared to what they're up against — "the Trump administration."
Klobuchar revealed that they knew each other since the beginning and have shared a "beer and burger" when she was in South Bend. She admitted that Buttigieg was "amazing then and amazing now" and that throughout the campaign they used to text each other, using bitmojis a couple of times as well. She admitted that their husbands get along pretty well with each other but these are the things that people don't see.
"Debate brings out competitiveness and you are fighting for your cause and your supporters but right now is an election like no other. It is one of the reasons we always kept our communications open and he just sent me a video of his dog just yesterday" concluded Klobuchar.