Klobuchar jokes to Cuomo: ‘I feel you creeping over my shoulder’ but ‘not in a Trumpian manner’

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) referenced the 2016 election on Monday, joking during a CNN town hall that she could “feel” host Chris Cuomo looming behind her, though “not in a Trumpian manner.”

“I feel you creeping over my shoulder,” Klobuchar told Cuomo as she answered a question about climate change. “Not in a Trumpian manner.” 

.@amyklobuchar “I feel you [@ChrisCuomo] creeping over my shoulder, I don’t know, not in a Trumpian manner.” She, Cuomo and the audience then laugh pic.twitter.com/nBdcVKzyMu

— Mike Brest (@MikeBrestDC) April 22, 2019

Klobuchar’s remark came as she answered a Harvard student’s question about how she planned to “include rural communities in the discussion on climate change.”

“This is what I say to my rural voters: I say look at what’s in front of you, because for too long we’ve been talking about it as more of a coastal issue,” Klobuchar said.

“Let’s talk about it for the middle of the country, where we need the political support,” she continued. “And I personally think someone from the Heartland could do a pretty good job of that.”

The joke, which drew laughs from the audience at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, appeared to be a reference to a 2016 presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and then-candidate Donald Trump, when the real estate mogul was panned for following his opponent across the stage as she spoke.

Clinton later recounted that experience in her 2017 book “What Happened,” writing that her “skin crawled” as Trump stalked her around the stage. 

Klobuchar was the first of five Democratic presidential candidates to take the stage for a town hall event on CNN Monday night. She’ll be followed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

–Updated at 8:07 p.m.