Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) called Hillary Clinton's comments stating that she was going to put coal miners out of jobs, "unfortunate" during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday.
McCaskill is a strong supporter of Clinton, who is competing in West Virginia's Democratic primary on Tuesday as well, a very strong state for the coal industry. McCaskill twice referred to climate change during her answer.
"Senator, the remarks on the coal miners that Secretary Clinton made, saying, quote, and let me be precise, she said, ‘We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.’ As we mentioned, she since tried to clarify those remarks," Blitzer said. "She called them a mistake. But do you see this possibly coming back to haunt her tonight, maybe even further down the road if she's the Democratic nominee?"
"Well, I think it was unfortunate that she put it that way," McCaskill said. "But she and Bernie Sanders both agree that we have to have more clean energy."
"Global warming, as Bernie says over and over again, is a crisis confronting our world and America has to lead on this. But that doesn't mean that we don't take care of those coal miners and their families by retraining them, by getting them other jobs and she's been eloquent about that. And she's had real policies that will in fact, protect those families from job loss as the economy kind of washes up against the coal industry and also as climate change becomes more and more of a danger to everyone in the world, including everybody in America."