i ll give you know, this is is a in a very pro-trump state. the man who beat me in the senate beat me because of donald trump. by the way, he s a constitutional law professor and called himself a constitutional conservative, the entire company pain waving but where does he stand on this? senator blount constitutionally is correct. he is constitutionally where conservatives would be, where medicalisonian conservatives would be. where is your former opponent? he s a constitutional law professor, does he understand this is a dangerous step? i m not sure. he s been very quiet other than saying he supports the president. so i think he ll vote politically instead of constitutionally, if i had to guess. but we ll see when it comes down
that president trump is to sign is going to hold members of congress personally liable for claims of harassment that they commit. and accused lawmakers can no longer use taxpayer settlements. and amy klobuchar is behind this bill. congratulations are in order, and it is a big step and hard fought. yes, a lot of people were involved. senator blount was the republican leader and of course, jackie speier and others in the house, and it is the focus here is to change a system that really was designed to protect the politicians instead of the vi victims. it had cooling off periods, and very hard to figure out the byzantine rules that were involved. what we with did is to simplify it, and put a legal representative in place for people to report things to, and then we made the members individually liable, and some people said wait for the new
secure election act seemed like a sure thing. a bipartisan bill with the sole purpose of protect our voting systems from interference. republican roy blount was the chairman of the powerful senate rules committee. was set to mark up the bill on wednesday, with the expectation of a full senate vote in october. that markup never happened. no explanation was given as to why. until yesterday when yahoo! news reported the bill had been held up in the senate at the behest of the white house, which opposed the proposed legislation. the white house then told yahoo news that while the administration appreciates congress s interest in election security, the department of homeland security has all the statutory authority it needs to assist state and local officials to improve the security of existing election infrastructure. lead democrat on the bill senator amy klobuchar of minnesota joins me tonight. what happened here? it was a shocker, chris, because the bill was going so well. senator
into law so we can at least if we re going to help the states since maine and north dakota and arkansas cannot protect themselves from a vladimir putin cyberattack then we put some best practices into law. i still think we have a chance to move forward. i wish they d been more forthright and certainly done it early on because langford and i have had this out there for a year with senator kamala harris and senator graham, senator burr and warner support the bill. this is a major effort. and so we just have to get this done 74 days before the election. here s the thing. this is the kind of legislating that i think there was more common as sort of an older model of how congress works which i think has changed in lots of ways. and the white house comes in and they basically nuke it. but you know, you re a co-equal branch of government. roy blount doesn t take orders from the white house. roy blount is a united states senator and he s a powerful member of the senate. you guys could just
we had the votes, that s true with senator blount s support. but we didn t have the republican support we needed on the committee. not to pass it but to then pass it on the floor. and we needed senator mcconnell to bring it up on the floor. so now we re going back p negotiating again. practically we want to get this done more than score a political point. speaking of bipartisan legislating i want to ask you a question about someone you re close to, john mccain, the senator from arizona of course whose family announced today that he will be refusing any subsequent medical treatment for his cancer and thanking all the people that have scarcared for . and i m just wondering as someone who s worked with him your thoughts about senator mccain today. well, this was heartbreaking today. my husband and i went to visit john and cindy a little over a month ago, and i m telling you, he still had his humor, this r