Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said on Sunday that the late Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) love for his country was unmatched.
Klobuchar said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that she visited with McCain amid his battle with brain cancer last month.
“He was pretty fragile. But he was still his irascible self, yelling things when things came up on the TV … telling me his views on things,” she said.
{mosads}“But there was this moment. I had brought a few of his books with me. And I don’t know what I thought, we were going to talk them through, but he pointed to a sentence from one of his books. And it said, ‘Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself.’ “
Klobuchar also said that the six-term senator and former GOP presidential candidate, who died on Saturday at the age of 81, “had a joy about politics and a love for his country that was unmatched.”
“And while he never made it to the presidency, in the Senate, he was the leader that would see a hot spot in the world and just say, we need to go there and stand up for that democracy,” she added.
“He went every place, every place that no one else would go, to stand up for America. And, in that way, he was a leader like no other,” she said.
Klobuchar during the CNN interview also reminisced about McCain’s mentorship in the Senate, saying his legacy will live on.
“And that’s John McCain, whether it was his decision as a POW to allow others to be released before him because he didn’t want to have special treatment, whether it was the way he was in the Senate, standing up for immigrants, standing up for health care, whether it was … the resiliency after the presidential race, where he could have just gone home and given up. Instead, he went back to the Senate, did his work, mentored young senators like myself, taught us how to act on the world stage, always making sure he had women up front,” she said.
“Maybe it’s all those strong women in his life, from his mom, to [his wife] Cindy, to his daughter Meghan. But that was a big part of him. And those are lessons that he has passed on to so many people in politics.”