2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar said voters supported President Trump in 2016 because they believed he was telling them the truth.
“They want you to come out there, look them in the eye, and tell them the truth,” Klobuchar told the Washington Post. “I don’t think Trump was telling them the truth about everything, but they felt that way. And I understand why they voted the way they did, because they felt kicked around.”
The Minnesota Democrat has presented herself as someone who can win over Midwestern voters who backed Trump in 2016. She has played up what she described as her own “blunt, direct and tell-you-what-I-think” and “Iron Range style” approach to communicating, after reports she threw things at her staff, yelled at them, and made them cry.
Her rival Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., was blasted by a top Hillary Clinton aide for saying: “Donald Trump got elected because, in his twisted way, he pointed out the huge troubles in our economy and our democracy,” Buttigieg said. “At least he didn’t go around saying that America was already great, like Hillary did.”
Klobuchar, 58, is one of more than 20 candidates running in the Democratic primary. She is currently on just 1.3% in the RealClearPolitics poll average, which Joe Biden leads with 39%, followed by Bernie Sanders on 15.5%, and Elizabeth Warren on 7.7%.
Trump narrowly lost Klobuchar’s home state of Minnesota during the 2016 election to Clinton. She received 46.4% of the votes in the state, while Trump earned 44.9%.
