MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Tim Kaine

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

HAYES: Joining me now is Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat from Virginia.

Senator, there were a lot of people -- Democrats, not Democrats,  independents, who were very much opposed to Brett Kavanaugh being nominated  and to him being confirmed who are feeling angry and hurt and beside  themselves.

How do you feel? What`s your message to them?

KAINE: Well, I`m very, very depressed about it. I really am. I -- I  waited until after the judiciary committee hearing and I interviewed Judge  Kavanaugh personally, watched the hearing to decide after I had read his  opinions. I announced my opposition for two reasons, that he was too --  frankly too deferential to the executive. I think he won`t hold the  president accountable. And I was worried about whether he would uphold  precedent.

But then when Dr. Ford came forward with her allegations, suddenly it was a  real test of the senate, would we take an allegation, a serious allegation  of sexual assault with significant corroboration, would we take it  seriously or not?

And the senate, I don`t think, took it seriously. I`m reminded of that --  one of my favorite movies Chinatown when they asked the detective who used  to be a detective back in Chinatown, what did you do there? He said as  little as possible.

And that`s basically what the GOP majority did, the investigation was a  sham. They interviewed a handful of witnesses and decided not to talk to,  ignored dozens of witnesses who had been proffered by Dr. Ford and Ms.  Ramirez. And I think the message sent by this vote to people, especially  those who suffered or are suffering sexual assault is extremely negative.  And the only way we`re going to overcome that is we have to be energized  and insist that we want something different out of the Senate and we want  something different out of the Supreme Court.

HAYES: Were you or others in your caucus in conversation with Joe Manchin  and Heidi Heitkamp? Heidi Heitkamp camp announcing that she was a no, Joe  Manchin saying that he was a yes today about this vote? And what were  those conversations like?

KAINE: Well, Chris, I`m going to be a little -- you know, when you have  one on one conversations you don`t necessarily just go out and spill them  all. But yes, look…

HAYES: You can just tell me. No one will hear.

KAINE: I`ve talked to Heidi, I`ve talked to Joe. I talked to Susan  Collins. I talked to Jeff Flake over the course of the last few weeks,  talked to all of them. These are people I work carefully with, traded  texts or emails, handed them court opinions that I thought that they should  read. Everybody makes up their own mind.
But no, we were -- we really were holding out hope today. And as you  remember, even after  somebody votes for cloture, they can still vote no on passes. John McCain  did that a year plus ago on the Affordable Care Act repeal. But it looks  like today everybody`s locked into their positions.

And again, I had reasons for coming out against Judge Kavanaugh a while  back. But I think that the sexual assault allegations are so important, about 180 individuals, men and women from Virginia, reached out to me in the last two weeks to say I`ve never told anybody this story, but I`m telling you now. Chris, some of these were people that I know, that I`ve known for decades who had never shared their story of sexual assault. Some were young. Some were 70 or 80-year-olds. And they are so pained at the notion that the senate would not take them seriously.And now the Supreme Court may not take them seriously. It`s like kicking  somebody when  they`re down. And that`s why we have to be both mourn the lack of  seriousness in this senate in this issue, but also be super energized and  just demanding. We`ve got to have a different senate who will take these  kinds of charges seriously.

HAYES: You know, in my conversations off the record with activists and  some of the people around the interest groups that are very focused on the  court, there`s a lot of frustration, they felt, that Democrats weren`t  fighting hard enough, they weren`t committed enough to fighting this seat.  The math is the math obviously. There`s only so much you can do. But what  do you say to those people  who say you didn`t fight hard enough. Chuck Schumer didn`t rally people  enough and this was a failure on the Democrats?

KAINE: Well, look, I think there`s a lot of times people want to blame  ourselves when we stood strong on this. We didn`t get every Democratic  vote, but we stood very strong and stood up both against Judge Kavanaugh`s  jurisprudential philosophy and then when the sexual assault allegations  came out, you know, then we stood strong on that.

And look, on the other side they hope that these voters will blame  Democrats and be unenergized going in. But the fact is, as a minority,  Chris, and I think you know this, math is math, we wish it were different.  We wish we had the majority. We wish we could stop a GOP that was majority  that was determined to ignore serious allegations of sexual assault, but  wishing it was the case is  not going to make it happen. The only thing that`s going to make it happen  is turning out and voting and putting a different senate in. And in 32  days, we`ve got an opportunity to put in a senate that`s majority Democrat  where we can stop this kind of foolishness from happening and send a  different message to people who have suffered or are suffering under sexual  assault.

HAYES: All right. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, many thanks for your  time tonight.

KAINE: Absolutely.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source