MSNBC "All In With Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Katherine Clark

Interview

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REP. KATHERINE CLARK (D-MA): Chris, they keep saying the quiet part out loud and they keep telling us exactly where they are. They are not on the side of democracy. They are not on the side of the American people, and they are not meeting this moment where everything is on the line.

We are at this point in our country`s history where we are fighting for racial, economic, and climate justice. And the route to all of that goes through protecting that right to vote, protecting our democracy. And just five months ago on January 6, we saw the insurgents stormed the Capitol fueled by the big lie of Donald Trump. And then we watched as our colleagues across the aisle perpetuated that big lie.

And now, they are exploiting that and saying that we don`t want to compete, we want to cheat. And we will do anything to keep power. They keep telling us who they are and we have to believe them.

HAYES: I`m just going to come back to this just because the quote here is really amazing. We have everything working in our favor right now. Now, normally a politician can say that and say look, the recovery`s going to be bad or he could -- maybe he`ll say something about inflation or something - - you know, we have everything working our favor or usually parties do well in the out years. There`s a million things you can say after that.

But to say, as a politician, everything is working right now. We control a redistricting process where we will be able to name our own voters and redistricting to the majority is to say like that`s what this is all about. And that`s why it seems to me there has to be a realization, I imagine there is in the House, that like there`s not going to be 10 votes on the Republican senate side for something that would reform the process by which the very Republican Party thinks it will redistrict itself into a majority.

CLARK: Yes. And Mitch McConnell underscored that again today saying that no matter what compromise is met, if we met all the concerns of Republicans in a compromise bill, it still wouldn`t be good enough. And that is why we are in not a fight for the majority or for the midterms, we`re in a fight for the soul of our country. We are in a fight for who we are going to be as a country.

Do we get to continue this grand experiment in democracy? Do we get to use this opportunity to reset our economy and our recovery to put the American family first and make sure there`s equal opportunity for everybody or are we going to allow that fundamental right of voting to be taken away.

And what we have to realize is that this is a Washington problem. When you get outside of the beltway, the American people understand this. They want us to fight corruption. They want our presidents to have -- you know, to be free of conflict of interest. They want voting to be secure and to be easy so that you don`t have to choose between showing up at your job and collecting a paycheck and exercising that fundamental right to vote.

They want communities of color to be able to vote as easily as any other community. So, it is the American people versus a small group of Republicans who are bound and determined to roll back history back to a Jim Crow era where we have very damaging and oppressive voting laws in this country that are aimed at making sure communities of color cannot vote, that people cannot express their democracy. They want it so that politicians pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.

HAYES: They just said it. And it`s just common sense among Republicans now. Like, well, we`re just redistricting ourselves into a majority so why would we have to listen to anyone else? Congresswoman Katherine Clark who`s in House leadership, thanks for making some time for us tonight.

CLARK: Thank you, Chris.

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