Why Elizabeth Warren teared up during lengthy ovation at Democratic National Convention
BOSTON – What was going through the mind of Sen. Elizabeth Warren as she uncharacteristically teared up during a prolonged ovation at last week's Democratic National Convention?
The Massachusetts Democrat spoke to WBZ-TV about a variety of topics, during an interview on the weekend edition of "Keller at Large."
Standing ovation for Elizabeth Warren at DNC
Warren reflected on the large ovation she received when she took the stage in Chicago during the DNC.
"It was a moment when I thought about all the people in that room, all these volunteers, people who got in the fight just like I did, because they really cared about something," she said. "They were all there because they believe we can build a better world. And for 12 years, I've been part of that, and I felt grateful and felt a real sense of responsibility."
Elizabeth Warren up for reelection
This fall, Warren will ask voters to return her to the Senate for another six years. In a recent debate among the three GOP candidates hoping to challenge her aired on WBZ-TV and CBS Boston News, one of them, John Deaton (Disclosure: a member of Jon Keller's family works for a Super PAC supporting Deaton) claimed that while Warren is "great at fighting against the rich and wealthy, that is not the same as fighting for the poor and the middle class."
Warren's response: "I'm not really sure what he's referring to, but I will tell you something about this work in the Senate. I think of something like the hearing aid bill that I got passed with [Republican] Senator Chuck Grassley … breaking the monopoly that a handful of hearing aid companies had, and the price of hearing aids across this country has now gone down … Last week, I was standing in the drugstore, waiting in line when I glanced over and there were hearing aids for $799. For me, that's what it means to be a Senator, you've got a chance to use these tools to make life a little more affordable for middle class families, let people build a little more economic security."
Kamala Harris' policy plans
Asked about criticism of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for not laying out more specific policy plans, Warren answered the question with a question.
"Remind me what Donald Trump's plan to deal with inflation is? Does it involve a magic wand or not? What Vice President Harris has said is, look, there are a lot of pieces that came together to cause prices to go up as we came out of the pandemic… supply chain [issues]… the war in Ukraine had shut down access to certain commodity goods, and that one of the things that happened within that as we clicked on through those higher prices, is there were corporations that looked around and said, 'You know what, we don't have a lot of competitors in our space. We can not only pass along the…cost increases that we have to pay, we can actually jack our prices up a whole lot more.' And I'm not talking about another two or 3% I'm talking about 100% 150% for some of these folks. And so what the Vice President has said is, let's go after price gouging. The American people understand that price gouging has been going on. And you know who else understands that price gouging has been going on? The corporate executives themselves, they have no shame. They get on these earnings calls and say inflation has been very good to us. It gives us an excuse to raise prices way high and to increase our profit margins. And that's what some companies have done. She's proposed a way to deal with that."
Warren also talked about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to end his presidential campaign and endorse Trump.
You can view the entire interview in the video player above. And don't forget to join us every Sunday morning at 8:30am for more conversations with political newsmakers.