Amy Klobuchar Claims English Language Vote Was a Mistake

Democrat presidential hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said Monday that she was wrong in voting for a 2007 bill that included a provision to make English America’s official language.

Klobuchar’s comments came during Vice News’s Brown and Black Presidential Candidate Forum, which was held in Des Moines, Iowa, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

“I think we’ve learned a lot since then including why we don’t want that to happen because it would be such a problem for immigrants trying to do everything from accessing government to vote,” Klobuchar said.

The 2007 vote came during Klobuchar’s first term as a senator, and the Minnesota native attempted to make it clear that she supports a pathway to citizenship for people who are in the United States illegally.

Klobuchar also attempted to defend her eight-year record as a Hennepin County attorney, a time in which she faced immense criticism for the imprisonment of blacks for nonviolent drug crimes. Klobuchar deflected the criticism by claiming the black incarceration rate fell 12 percent during her time in office.

Asked later in the event whether she had ever smoked marijuana, Klobuchar responded, “You have to go back to college days.”

In 2016, while campaigning and speaking about Jeb Bush, Donald Trump also signaled that he would not mind having English as the nation’s official language.

“I like Jeb,” Trump said at the time. “He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.”