When then-Virginia Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine was campaigning for governor in 2005 he criticized his opponent for running a race that “beats up on 40 percent to try to gain the approval of 60 percent.”
Flash forward to 2016 and now-Sen. Tim Kaine defended his running mate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks calling supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a “basket of deplorables” in a recent campaign speech.
“What Virginians need is a leader who is about bringing people together, who doesn’t run a race or govern in a way that beats up on 40 percent to try to gain the approval of 60 percent,” Kaine said during a 2005 gubernatorial debate against former Virginia Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore.
Kaine went after Kilgore for “mean-spirited” attacks against illegal immigrants and local officials trying to deal with the problem. He also criticized Kilgore for paying for radio ads “attacking gay and lesbian Virginians.
“There’s a mean-spiritedness to your position,” Kaine said.
But Kaine wasn’t so critical of Clinton when she called Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.”
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” she said at a campaign event in September.
“The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it,” she said. “And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
Kaine was confronted by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, during October’s vice presidential debate.
“Hillary Clinton said something on the campaign trail, and the very next day, she said, you know what, I shouldn’t have said that,” Kaine said.
Watch Kaine’s 2005 debate here.
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