Senator Kaine lauded the enthusiasm seen across the country as voters come together in support of his and Hillary Clinton’s vision for a country where we are stronger together. Kaine addressed the letter released by the FBI last week, saying that, “I think what Hillary and our supporters have decided today — there may be some distractions, but we won’t be distracted.”
Kaine contrasted his and Clinton’s belief in strong diplomacy and strong military force with Trump’s dangerous views on NATO and nuclear weapons, his claims that he knows more than our generals and that our military is a “disaster,” as well as his record of praising dictators and stiffing Americans, including veterans. “He would be dangerous for our country, and dangerous for the world. […] If you won’t defend American democratic traditions, but you won’t condemn another country trying to influence American elections, there’s something wrong with that. There’s something wrong with that.”
Kaine’s remarks as transcribed are below:
“Give Lakesha another round of applause. Isn’t she something? And I’d love to have Lakesha introduce me everywhere, because her track record – military spouse for 15 years, Military Spouse of the Year, entrepreneur – she is a great validator for the very kinds of things that Hillary Clinton and I want to do should we have the honor to serve you all as your next president and vice president. I’m still having trouble getting used to those words. I tell you, it is […].
I can’t tell you how excited I am to be here with you today in Jacksonville. I’m excited because I have a boy with the two eight who is – lives just down the road in Surf City. He’s deployed overseas right now for the second time. [Cheers and applause.] We come here all the time to have fun in this community. We were here for Thanksgiving last time, we were here for July 4th this year to hang out with our boy Nat and all of our family gathered – come to that airport in Jacksonville and schlep down to his little townhouse, have some fun on the beach and enjoy North Carolina hospitality. But we also have an awful lot of fun visiting the people at Lejeune who serve with my son. He is deployed through the end of the year and we’re counting the days when he’s going to come back, but he loves […] and he loves being based here at Lejeune. And it’s so nice to be in Jacksonville with you.
But I’m also here under a lot of pressure. Not only am I here for fun, I’m under a lot of pressure, because see, my wife came and spoke last week. And I tell you, when I come some place and speak after my wife has spoken, then usually after I speak, then they say, ‘Just send your wife back next time.’ Some people have already said to me in the photo line, ‘Man, your wife’s really a fireball. Your wife’s really fantastic.’ I said, ‘I know she’s fantastic but don’t stress me out before I go and give my speech.’
It is really, really great to be here with you guys, and what an exciting time. I want to thank a few people and then talk for a bit about what’s at stake with eight days left – eight days in what I believe – I truly believe this – the most important, the most consequential election in our lifetime. So thank you. So Lakesha, obviously our 2014 Marine Corps Spouse of the Year, and what a great role model. And we have a number of participants who’ve already been […]. Linda Dobson, who gave the invocation; Stan Webster, who led us in the pledge; Chris Mevlin, who gave a welcome; Gary Roush, who gave the organizing pitch. Always got to do the organizing pitch. Always got to do the organizing pitch. Lauren Welch, who gave remarks from her position at Coastal Carolina Community College; and a guy that I’ve gotten to know over the years but have seen a bunch recently, your statewide candidate for state treasury, Dan Blue.
But I’ve got even a more incredible bunch of people I have to acknowledge today. We’ve got fourth-graders from Clyde Erwin Elementary School. Very happy that they were able to come. And one of the virtues of being a battleground state is you get to see politics right in action right in your neighborhood. And having the students from Clyde Erwin – I don’t know if it’s exactly the same in North Carolina, but fourth-graders in Virginia, fourth grade is the year that you really start studying government. And so it’s a great time for them to see this amazing democracy we have for all of our works and challenges, and Lord knows we got many. All you have to do is watch TV ads and you say, ‘Okay, there’s works and challenges .’
I know how blessed you are in this country; I imagine you do too. I was a missionary in 1980 and ’81 in Honduras, and it was a military dictatorship. And people prayed for the day when they might be able to vote for something, because they couldn’t vote and pick their leaders. There weren’t free and fair elections. There was no tradition of them supporting an outcome or a peaceful transfer and power. And I was 21 and I admit I took a lot of things for granted when I arrived that I haven’t taken for granted since I got back, because I saw the system that a whole lot of people still live under in the world, and then I saw the system we have with voting and early voting and kids getting to come to rallies and hear speakers of both parties. And it’s a vigorous and robust – imperfect because we’re imperfect, but we still set the standard for the world. And anybody who stands up and tells you that they won’t trust an electoral outcome in this country or that an election is going to be rigged in this country, I got a question for you: If you think that lowly of our democracy, if you think that lowly of our voters and officials, then why would you even bother to run to be president?
Well, you know we’ve got eight days left, eight days left in this election. And in North Carolina last Thursday – I was here on Thursday – early voting sites opened all across the state. They – Michelle and Hillary had a big rally that day. We were here early in the morning in Charlotte and I went up to the rally […] to visit early vote sites on day one. We saw great activity. On that opening day, a number of counties broke all their records for early vote turnout in a single day. So now every day is Election Day in North Carolina. Every day is Election Day, and we really need you.
If you haven’t early voted, please do. Why does it matter to vote early versus to vote on the 8th? I’ll tell you why it really, really is helpful. If you vote early, then all of these great staffers and volunteers we have, when we get to the end, instead of focusing on every vote, they can focus on only those who haven’t voted. So they get to take their energy and sort of multiply it and multiply the attention. As I – I was campaign with Al Franken, the senator from Minnesota who was a Saturday Night Live before. And he said, ‘Vote early so we don’t have to think about you anymore.’ Now, he said that […]. It really does help at the end to focus your energy.
But the second reason voting early really helps is polls can be wrong. So there’s polls, but are they right or wrong? We don’t know. But I’ll tell you what doesn’t lie. You start to get real data about who is registering, about who is seeking and returning an absentee ballot and about who is going to vote early, now you really know something about how an election is going and you can make little adjustments to which city you go to or where you run a TV ad. You can really be more effective in what you can do not based on just on polls, but based on real voting turnout data. So please vote early if you can. And if you’ve had a chance – I know many of you, I’m sure, are already volunteering, but if you haven’t volunteered and would like to volunteer now, all you have to do is text ‘together’ to 47246. And if you do that, we’ll sweep you up and we’ll give you something to do contacting voters and making sure that they get their questions answered and turnout either in early vote or before November 8th.
This is my sixth trip to North Carolina just for politics just since being on the ticket. I’m not talking about trips I’ve taken for family or trips I’ve taken earlier efforts to help candidates here. Just since coming onto the ticket in Philadelphia, it’s my sixth trip. Did you guys know you were important? I’m not just here by accident. I mean, I love coming but I’m also here because you’re important. Fifty states – every state’s important, every state’s got electoral votes, but pretty early in a race there are states that are going to clearly go one way or clearly go the other way. So you narrow it down to about 13 or 14 states that are battleground states. And then you get to the last two weeks of the race and then you’re narrowing it down even further. There is a small handful of states, and I would say in this case it’s probably about five, that I call checkmate states. North Carolina, you guys are a checkmate state. You’re a checkmate state. If Hillary Clinton wins North Carolina’s electoral votes, she will be president, period. No ifs, ands, or buts; she will be president.
And there’s just a couple of states like that. There’s just a couple of them. Now, that’s really cool because what it means is – I mean, I don’t know if any of you are like me. I don’t like to stay up late. I don’t want to stay up until Mountain Time to know who the president is. I don’t want to stay up till Pacific Time to know who the president is. I want to know in Eastern Time. Well, that’s the good news. If you’re a checkmate state in North Carolina, you don’t need to worry about what any other state is going to do. All you have to worry is about delivering a victory for Hillary Clinton right here. And if you do, then she’s going to be president. You can take that to the bank. You can take it to the bank. And that’s because, as you kind of look at the path, there’s really no path to victory for Donald Trump that doesn’t include North Carolina. So if we take North Carolina on November 8th, then Hillary’s got this thing. And so the good news is you don’t need to worry about anything else. All you got to do is worry about right here and right here only. In Virginia, we used to be so uncompetitive that we always had to stay up and watch what other states did because we were about as red as red could be when I started politics in 1994. We’ve gotten a lot more competitive. We’re feeling good about it right now, but we’re working awful hard to make sure we, like you, produce a good outcome.
You know North Carolina is close, right? The polls are close. You went for President Obama in 2008; then you went for Mitt Romney in 2012. This is a state that’s right on the bubble. And so when you’re close, that means the value of the volunteers and the person-to-person means a tremendous amount.
Let me give you a little bit of data from the road, including North Carolina. As of today, this morning, more than 21 million people have already voted in the United States, and North Carolina has had very, very good early voting. We feel really excited about what we see. And it’s a pretty amazing electorate right now. For the first time in the history of this country – it was validated within the last month – there are more than 200 million Americans registered to vote, which is pretty powerful – 200 million – and I want to get my number right here – 50 million are millennials, under age 34, which is also really cool. And we got a few millennials here, right? That’s a lot of power. I think sometimes millennials think […] a lot of power – 50 million millennials.
We’re seeing tremendous enthusiasm. In some ways, the enthusiasm kind of jacked up this weekend because – I know you followed the news Friday. The FBI put out this very unusual letter, very unprecedented. They’re not supposed to talk about an ongoing investigation and they’re also not generally supposed to put out politically sensitive stuff right before an election. But 11 days before the election, the FBI said not that anything’s being reopened. The FBI did a massive investigation into the email question with Hillary Clinton and concluded in July that no reasonable prosecutor would find any additional need to move forward on this case. And when Director Comey was asked about it in Congress, he said even that conclusion wasn’t even close. So when this letter came out Friday kind of raising questions but not really answering any questions, and then the FBI director had to backtrack on the letter – he said, ‘Yeah, you’re right, this could be seriously misconstrued,’ he had to backtrack on it with a second letter just 24 hours later. I think what Hillary and what our supporters have decided is there may be some distractions, but we won’t be distracted. And what we saw – what we saw was a real increase in energy and activity over the weekend in early voting, and that’s really important. There may be distractions, but we’re not going to be distracted. And that’s why I’m here with you today.
Talk a little about – I want to talk a little bit about Hillary. I want to talk a little bit about the choice that Donald Trump offers, especially when it comes to what Lakesha talked about, the role of commander-in-chief. I want to talk about one important issue – the economy – and then how we’re going to win, how we’re going to win. Let me start with Hillary the person, because campaigns are about issues but it’s not like a grocery list. It’s not like five things or a laundry list; it’s about people and what motivates people. I think sometimes, those of us in politics, we don’t talk enough about what motivates us. We will talk about our position; we don’t talk enough about what motivates us. And I’ve gotten to know Hillary very, very well and I want to share with you my perception of her and what motivates her, because I think this is so important.
In fact, Hillary went to that place at the very end of the third debate. Chris Wallace at the end said, ‘There’s two minutes left. You each have a minute. What’s your closing argument?’ And Hillary said, just went right to it, she said, ‘Look, for more than 40 years I have been working to empower families and children. As a civil rights lawyer, first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, senator from New York, Secretary of State, I have been working to empower families and kids.’ We’ve never had a president who’s made that their life’s work. We know Hillary would be the first woman president, but she would also be the first president who has made the empowerment of families and kids her life’s work.
Why did she choose that? When she was a kid in a Methodist youth group in the suburbs of Chicago, she fell under the influence of a fantastic youth minister, a guy by the name of Don Jones, who actually had some assignments here in North Carolina during his career. And she just kind of decided early that if families and children succeed, then that’s a pretty good barometer for whether the whole society will succeed. And so that’s why she’s focused on this issue and that’s her motivation. Hillary has had a lifelong passion. I know what she’s going to be worried about every day as president, and it’s not herself. It’s what can she do so that our families and children are more successful and the whole society’s more successful. And compare that with Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump does have lifelong passion. He does have one, but it’s Donald J. Trump. It’s not about other people. Hillary’s lifelong passion has been about other people, and she’s got the stamina and the determination and the grit to push this through.
My favorite story about Hillary is a story from when she was first lady. Most of you know the story, and I’ve said this in front of Hillary before. I tell this story better than Hillary because she doesn’t like to brag about herself, but I don’t mind bragging about her. She was first lady, and you know that President Clinton tried to do what President Obama was able to do: eventually expand – get the Affordable Care Act, do comprehensive health care reform. Because of President Obama, 20 million people in this country have health insurance who didn’t have it before. Twenty million. We got some right here. We got some right here.
Look, President Clinton tried it too, but as is often the case, you try to do something to advance progress, you don’t always get it the first time. Those who want to fight against progress, they can be successful. And in this instance, when President Clinton was trying, they fought against health care. Not everybody’s as old as me, but those who are remember they fought against it by calling it Hillarycare. It was like they were going to sink it and sink her at the same time, and they were successful. And so that loss was painful. That was personally painful. It mattered to her obviously, health care did, but they made it personal to her and it failed.
Now, this is the moment where you see what a person’s made of. Something you care about fails, and they make it personal to you so the failure – you feel it, you feel the sting of it. So what do you do? Do you just change and do something else? Do you say we’re going to have to wait another ten years before we try it again? Do you blame everybody or sulk around and get into the blame game thing? No. What Hillary did is she said, ‘We can’t get health care for everybody. I really wish we could, but can we get health care for every low-income child in this country?’ So she went to work immediately with Democrats and Republicans to get a program passed that’s operating here, Virginia, all around the country, Children’s Health Insurance Program. Eight million low-income children have health insurance because Hillary Clinton wouldn’t give up. She wouldn’t go away. She wouldn’t back down. She wouldn’t change her direction. She said, ‘I’m going to hold fast to my dream, and my dream is I’m going to help families and kids succeed, and nothing will stand in my way. I can lose today, but I’m not giving up tomorrow. And I got faith that I’m even going to be successful tomorrow.’
Do you know that the next president of the United States is going to have some bad days? The next president will have some days where it’s not going to go his or her way. Do you want a president, when that day comes, who’s going to sulk or change direction or let go of their values? No, you want someone like Hillary Clinton who you can be absolutely confident will never give up or back down or go away. She is steady as a rock, and that’s the kind of person we need in the Oval Office, Hillary Clinton.
And you also know, and Lakesha laid it out, Hillary’s got a real good track record on the issues of support for the military. She worked on military support issues as first lady and also military family support issues. In the Senate, she was a member of the Armed Services Committee, and I was governor at that time. And so I’m governor in Virginia, which has a big military presence, and I’m aware of projects that Hillary is doing as a senator to get better benefits, for example, to the families of people in the Guard – National Guard units all over the country. So that track record of being an Armed Services Committee member in the Senate and being our chief diplomat gives Hillary the ability, I think, to make these tough decisions that a commander-in-chief has to make. Because you know, everybody, our strength, military, but if it’s just military and not diplomacy too, we’re not as strong as we need to be. You’ve seen the seal of the office of the president of the United States. It’s an eagle; there are two claws. In one claw is the lightning bolts of war; in the other claw the olive branches of diplomacy and peace. The eagle is looking at the olive branches of diplomacy and peace. That is always what we prefer in this country but we will always have a strong military to protect ourselves and to protect others when the olive branches of diplomacy and peace don’t work. Hillary Clinton understands both and how to balance.
Donald Trump – Donald Trump’s unfit to be commander-in-chief. He’s unfit to be commander-in-chief. He would be dangerous for our country and dangerous for the world. Where do I start, folks? Where do I start? Donald – let me start this way. Donald Trump has a bizarre fascination with dictators. Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Muammar Qadhafi, Saddam Hussein. He talks them up and Vladimir Putin in such an odd way. When he’s on a debate stage and he’s challenged by Chris Wallace of Fox News, ‘What about the Russian effort to influence the American election,’ it’s like Donald Trump becomes Vladimir Putin’s defense lawyer. ‘Well, we have no evidence to suggest that that’s happening.’ There is evidence. Donald Trump’s been briefed by our generals and intel officials, and he’s read the same materials that I have. And it is beyond dispute that Russia, for the first time that I’m aware of, is trying to engage in an effort to influence the outcome of an American election, but Donald Trump won’t call that out. What’s going on with that? If you – if you […] and, look, he won’t even defend that America can run an election. You won’t defend American Democratic traditions, but you won’t condemn another country trying to influence American elections? There’s something wrong with that. There’s something wrong with that.
Donald Trump not only praises dictators, but he’s kind of down on our allies. He calls NATO obsolete. Well, my son is deployed right now to train all of these NATO militaries. He’s in the […] and his whole battalion is overseas, basically working with NATO allies. They have a lot to fear […] with respect to an aggressive Russia. And Donald Trump says, ‘Well, NATO’s obsolete. We can tear that up.’ Let me just – let me just focus on this one for a minute. We’re living in a very complicated world. And the biggest thing we probably need to worry about is terrorism, right? So we’re engaged in a military action against ISIS right now, moving toward Mosul. Donald Trump tweeted out, ‘It’s failing.’ He’s been trash talking it – you know, when we’ve got troops that are working with the Iraqi military, and it is moving in a very solid way – and I have no doubt, I’ll tell you right now – I have no doubt that with the right time, we’re going to take Mosul back from ISIS, and then we’re going to take Raqqa, Syria back from ISIS, because of the combined effort of great American troops and knowhow, and the ability to coordinate with troops on the ground from Iraq, and the Kurds, and the Syrian opposition.
But what happens with ISIS, let’s be blunt – you narrow down their space on the battlefield, and then they start thinking, ‘Well, can we attack a jetliner […] or a bomb in Paris, or Brussels, or […], or Istanbul. Or can we even find somebody in the United States to inspire to do something dangerous, and hurt people?’ That’s what ISIS is doing now. How do you stop that? How do you stop that? The only way to stop that is by sharing intelligence. Here’s a person who might travel here or there. Here’s somebody you ought to watch. Who do you share intelligence with? You share it with your allies. You share it with your NATO allies, especially. So Donald Trump says, ‘Oh, NATO’s obsolete. Let me tear it up.’ You’re not going to make yourself stronger by abandoning alliances. You’re going to make yourself weaker. Because who are we going to share intelligence with then? And so that shows that Donald Trump just doesn’t get it. You’ve got to be strong in this world, with a strong military, strong alliances – and strong diplomacy is a key to this thing.
Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested that more nations – it would be good for the world if more nations got nuclear weapons. Now, this is as zany an idea as I’ve heard anybody advance on a presidential – in a presidential campaign. He said Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, should have […] nuclear weapons. He was confronted by the specter of Japan and Korea getting nuclear weapons, and an arms race in Asia, and said that could lead to nuclear war in Asia. And his quote was, ‘Go ahead, folks, enjoy yourself.’ Now, I guess he was trying to be funny. Right? So I will give him at least the benefit of that doubt. He was trying to be funny. But I don’t see anything funny. I don’t see anything funny about a nuclear arms race, and raising the prospect of nuclear war, whether it’s in Asia or anywhere else.
But I’ll tell you, the thing that makes me the most furious about Donald Trump is how he trash talks our military. During the debates – during the Republican debates, Donald Trump said over and over that the American military is a disaster. I mean, did that make you feel as furious as it made me feel? ‘It’s a disaster,’ is what he said. You tell that to the 2 million young men and women who volunteer in a time of war for the active Guard Reserve, risking their life, risking their health, because they love this country. What does that sound like to them, to have somebody who wants to be commander-in-chief call the military a disaster? He trashed John McCain, saying he wasn’t a hero because he was a POW. I’m on the Armed Services Committee. John McCain is my chair. We don’t agree on many things; we agree on many other things. But we get along well, and I have deep respect for him and his service.
Don’t you tell me that a POW who served honorably in this country, and then was imprisoned for four years, can’t be a hero, because he was captured. What kind of a person even has that thought come into their mind, much less coming out of their mouth, and yet, this guy wants to be commander-in-chief? We have this Virginia family, the Khan family, who live in Charlottesville. Their son was a captain in the Army. Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq, deployed – he was trying to save the lives of his colleagues. And when the Khan family heard Donald Trump saying that Muslims weren’t patriotic, or Muslims had to take an extra loyalty test or something, they got really mad about that. And they stood up at the Democratic convention and said, ‘Look, what do you mean Muslims can’t be patriotic? Can we tell you about our son? Here’s the Constitution. Have you even read the Constitution that says we are a nation that will respect all religions and not punish people if they choose to worship a certain way?’
What Donald Trump should have said then was, ‘You’re right, I’m sorry.’ But instead, what he did was go after the Khans, and spend time attacking them. ‘Oh, the wife who’s up on stage, she didn’t say anything. Probably because she was forced not to say anything, not allowed to, because she’s Muslim,’ and the mom had to come back and say, ‘When I was on stage with my husband, I didn’t say anything, because even though it’s been 10 years, I still can’t talk about my son’s death. I just can’t talk about it without getting too emotional. That’s why you didn’t hear from me.’ Do you not understand anything about what the pain of this might be; do you have such little empathy that you can’t get that?’ News just came out the other day, that when Donald Trump was attacking the Khan family, members of his own team said, ‘It may not be such a good idea to go after a Gold Star family,’ and he said, quote, ‘What’s a Gold Star family?’ What’s a Gold Star family? Yeah, he needs some extra courses at Trump University. I’ve got a speech writer in training over here. Very good. Very helpful.
And then […] I’ll tell you the last thing that really makes me mad. First debate, Hillary and Donald Trump are on stage. Donald Trump has not released his tax returns. Still hasn’t. Every presidential candidate, beginning with the presidency of Richard Nixon – Richard Nixon released his tax returns when he was president. Everybody else has who’s a major party nominee. Again, some of you are too young, but if you can’t meet the ethical standards of Richard Nixon, I mean, I’ll tell you, you’ve got a problem. There’s a problem. And Hillary was challenging Donald Trump on stage about the tax thing. ‘You’re not releasing your taxes because you’re trying to hide something.’ Now – and he was quiet. She said, ‘You’re trying to hide that you don’t – you’re not as wealthy as […]. You’re trying to hide that you’re not as charitable as you’ve been saying.’ But then she said […] ‘You’re trying to hide that you’re not paying any taxes.’
Now, that struck a nerve. And you remember what Donald Trump said: ‘That shows I’m smart. That shows I’m smart.’ So – and then the facts came out that suggest that he probably didn’t pay any federal taxes from maybe the mid-90s, and probably almost until 2010, based on the story. So, okay, so that makes him smart. So those of us who work – and, you know, we may not love paying taxes, but we are paying some taxes, because one percent – and it’s just one percent – of our adult population volunteered to serve in the military. And the deal is now, without a draft, that that one percent that volunteers means that there’s 99 percent of us that don’t have to volunteer. And so, do we owe any obligation to that one percent for volunteering, so that 99 percent of us don’t have to volunteer? I think the obligation we owe is to be respectful, and it’s also to write that tax check so that the 2 million people who do volunteer in a time of war have a paycheck, have a benefit, have some healthcare, have some body armor, have some weaponry.
And how about veterans who come back – and we made a promise to them that there will be a system, and there will be healthcare for them, and we made that promise. And this war, the war against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been – repeated deployments, unlike earlier wars. And that’s going to have some consequences for the VA system. But whatever the consequences, we promised we would be there. But the only way that system is there is that some of us are writing a check and paying some taxes to support that promise we made to our veterans. And you can go on and on. How do teachers get paid? How do students who can’t afford it get Pell grants to go to college? How do other first responders get paid? It’s because we’re a society that has some obligation to one another.
So when Donald Trump stands up and says, ‘Oh, yeah, no, I’m skipping out of taxes. That makes me smart,’ I guess he thinks the rest of u
