Not even Senator Dianne Feinstein was immune to the long lines at San Francisco International Airport in the wake of Thanksgiving weekend, and a KRON4 reporter got lucky with a chance to buttonhole Feinstein as she was held up in line at SFO.
U.S. senators, they’re just like us! Well, that’s what they’d like you to believe. Sure, they’re “like us,” except that they do massive insider trading on the classified information on which they’re briefed, and they bail out their rich friends when said rich friends get busted for failing to pay taxes.
But 89-year-old California senator Dianne Feinstein was, for a brief period Monday morning, just like us in the respect that she got stuck in a very long line at SFO while waiting for her flight back to Washington, D.C. KRON4 reporter Sara Stinson just happened to be there covering the crowd size at SFO, and lucked into a chance interview with the held-up Feinstein.
“Guess who else has to get back to work? Senator Dianne Feinstein,” Stinson says in the segment below. “I ran into her inside. She was checking a bag and then I asked her a few questions.” Feinstein took those few words to promote her current proposed assault weapons ban she proposed in 2021, noting the Club Q shooting and other various mass shootings we’ve seen in just the last ten days.
“You know, one of the tragedies of us is we’ve become a nation of guns,” Feinstein said in the impromptu interview. “It’s easy for virtually anybody to get a weapon, and we see the carnage that’s taking place. And I think the shooting of many people is such a shock the the American conscience that I’m really hopeful that there will be a movement to begin to reduce the number of firearms in this country.”
Pretty coherent for Dianne Feinstein! Her recently discussed habit of repeating herself and odd bouts of forgetfulness were not on display when she did this interview with no advance preparations.
It’s no secret in the SFist comment section that many voters would prefer Feinstein give up this ghost after a staggering 30 years in the Senate. But if she can get an assault weapons ban through, that would be quite a swan song. The problem is she probably can’t get it though. Her assault weapons ban did pass the House in July, but it was filibustered in the Senate. And you’d have to be suffering from “cognitive decline” if you think that the new GOP House would pass an assault weapons ban,
Image: WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 12: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) walks through the Senate Subway on her way to a vote at the U.S. Capitol September 12, 2022 in Washington, DC. As lawmakers return to Washington this week, Congress has until September 30 to pass to a continuing resolution to fund the government and avert a government shutdown. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
