Kaine calls out Donald Trump for praising Putin, trash-talking U.S. military

“Hey, aren’t I lucky? Man, I tell you, it is a wonderful thing to be here. First, hello ODU. It’s great to back on campus. I’ve got to say to President Broderick and Kate, you guys – you have hosted me so many times over my political career. I’ve been here talking about climate change with you. I’ve been here talking about military and veterans, been here talking about education issues, and there’s not a college in this commonwealth that has been more open to public officials coming down and presenting. You view it as an educational opportunity for faculty and staff and students, so thank you. Give President Broderick a big round of applause. He and Kate, wonderful friends.

General Arnold, I mean, that was a great introduction, General Arnold. I told him, ‘I’m going to steal a lot of those lines and use them in the next speeches I give,’ and he said that would be fine. But General Arnold is a great example of the top-notch professionals we have serving. And Hillary and I are so proud that he’s one of the number – big number of our military leaders who are out supporting the ticket. So give General Arnold a big round of applause.

We have from our state legislature Senator Lyn Lewis and Steve Hrithik, your delegate. and who are great friends. Give them a round of applause. The current lieutenant governor, next governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam. Ralph. My very, very close friend, Kenny Alexander – where is our mayor? Mr. Mayor, so good to be with you. And then I have been so happy in my neighborhood in Richmond because I am represented by the best congressman in Congress, Bobby Scott.

Now, and here is – there’s been a little court case that led to a little redistricting and Bobby’s district no longer includes my house, and so I’m a little bit mad about, but we have a great mutual friend, Donald McEachin, who is running who is now going to be my new congressman. But Bobby, thanks for all you do, and we’re just so excited to have you here and your great friendship. Appreciate it.

I hear some – an Amen corner here for my friend Congressman Scott. We’ve got a lot of – some folks on the pre-program. We had Karla Grase, who is the co-chair of the Hampton Democratic Party, Master Chief Petty Officer Susan Chipman, and Chief Petty Officer Joe Bradshaw, part of the pre-program. Give them a big round of applause. Thank you, guys.

Let me just do a couple of things. Anne and I are so thrilled to be here with you. And what Ann said is true, and I’ll just start there, I am so thrilled to be on this ticket. I’m thrilled to be on the ticket because Hillary Clinton is so qualified. I mean, her – when she got out of Yale Law School, she could have done a lot of things, and what she decided to do was go to the Children’s Defense Fund and work to empower families and children, and that was what she was going to do. Across the South and then as First Lady of Arkansas, and then as a great First Lady, fighting for health insurance for low-income kids. As a senator from New York – we have a painful anniversary Sunday, the 15th anniversary of 9/11. Hillary was the senator from New York when that happened, and she went to Ground Zero in New York just as we had a Ground Zero in Virginia at the Pentagon, and the rubble was still smoking. And then she came back and said, ‘I have to lead the effort to get funds to rebuild my city,’ as in not just for New York’s sake but to show that we don’t give up. And she also got funds to help our first responders – so many of our heroes who went into those buildings got sick because of the toxic chemicals and others. And Hillary battled for years to make good on her promise that these first responders would get healthcare treatment. That’s who we have running to be president, somebody who battles for families and kids, somebody who is so qualified.

When she asked me to be her running mate, I mean, I felt like I was Pinocchio turning into a real boy. I mean, like, wow, what, you want me? Are you kidding? I mean, I was humbled. I was amazed. I started to say yes right away, and she said, ‘Well, don’t answer yet, I want to tell you why.’ It’s been a very exciting and humbling experience, but I’ll just drill down on the point that Anne made. Part of the reason it’s so exciting is I’ve been in politics now for 22 years. I ran my first race in May of 1994, and I’ve run eight races and I have won eight races. And I’m going to be 9 and 0 after November 8th, folks. I’m going to be 9 and 0. I’m not losing this one.

But if I’m honest with myself and I ask, ‘Well, gosh, how come I’ve had this successful career,’ I have to say that my political career has been built on the support of an awful lot of strong women. My wife, Anne, who is the best public servant in my house and who has sacrificed a lot for me, including after Hillary asked me to be on the ticket – my wife loves being Secretary of Education in Virginia, and the fact that she said, ‘Yeah, but this is an all-in proposition, we have to win. Hillary wants me to talk to teachers. I’m going to resign so I can do it full time.’ That was a sacrifice for her. And Anne’s sacrifice – and as she’s said, I’ve had women campaign managers and cabinet secretaries and agency heads and donors, volunteers, and I’ve been the one with my name on the bumper sticker or the name on the ballot or the name on the yard sign, but I’ve had strong women backing me up to be a strong man to run and win eight races and to do some good things for my city and my commonwealth and my country.

So when I have a strong woman who will be the first woman President of the United States, who will make history in a nation that said 240 years ago that we were all created equal and it took 144 years even to give the women the right to vote, and then it’s been another 96 years and we haven’t had a woman president. And when she says, ‘I’m a strong woman and will you play this role and support me so the Clinton Administration can be successful,’ what an honor is that? I felt like – some people say payback is hell. No, it’s not, payback is great. I owe some people. I ought to pay back all the strong women who’ve helped me by being a great supporting vice president to a strong woman president. Payback is great. Payback is great. And I’ve met strong men all over this country who feel just like I do, that they’ve been supported by strong women, and hey, it’s great to be a strong man and support women in leadership, and that’s part of what this is about. It’s part of what it’s about.

So I’m thrilled to be on this ticket because Hillary is the best qualified person, as President Obama said, to be nominated by either party for a very long time, maybe ever, and she’s going to do great things for us, great things for this country.

[…] When I come here to ODU, I usually talk military vets, I’ve often talked climate change, and I’ve often talked education. So I’m just going to go with those three. I’m going to talk about the same issues I always talk about when I come to ODU.

Let’s talk military and vets. […] Armed Services Committee in the Senate. I’m on that committee now. And the people she worked with who are still in the Senate—Democratic and Republican—they tell me she was a fantastic senator. She was a fantastic member of our committee. She really got it—the importance of the military, the importance of military family—she got it. And she understands that we have to be strong and we have to do it the right way. It’s not just bluster and words, it’s making investments and supporting military families and supporting our troops. We can’t make military service easy; we can’t. We can make it a little easier to be a military family if we put the right policies in place, and Hillary Clinton understands that. She understands that.

And this is something that Anne and I care about. I’m on the Armed Services Committee, and Anne and I are a couple that has a child in the military. That’s kind of rare among senators and congresspeople these days. So this matters deeply to us, it matters deeply to us. So we’ve got plans to keep us safe the right way: by strengthening our military, not calling them a disaster, calling them in shambles, criticizing a general. We don’t go after John McCain and make fun of him because he was a POW. We don’t go after the Khan family from Charlottesville and ridicule a Gold Star family—we don’t do that, because we understand that you make our military strong by paying them respect, that’s what we understand. We also understand, though, you can’t just be strong off the military muscle. If you want to keep America safe, you’ve got to have diplomacy, too. You’ve got to have alliances, and Hillary was a Secretary of State and a diplomat who knows how to build up alliances.

I’ll just give you an example—the battle against ISIL. Here’s what’s going on on the battlefield right now: we’re shrinking them down, shrinking them down, shrinking them down. They hit their peak in about June of 2014, but since then they’ve been losing territory and losing cities. And the American men and women who are there serving—and serving with Kurds and serving with Iraqis and serving with Syrians on the battlefield—are having success in shrinking them down. 17 American men and women have lost their lives in this mission. Other have been injured. The sacrifices are very real, but they—because they’re good at what they do—they have been able to achieve some success on the battlefield, but there’s a problem, and the problem is this: when ISIL knows they’re losing ground, what they decide to do is, ‘Well, maybe we should do an attack in Paris, or Nice or in the Sinai or something. We’re losing ground in Syria and Iraq, so let’s do something there.’ How do you stop these attacks? Lone wolf attacks? How do you stop them?

You stop them by sharing intelligence with your allies. If you have strong allies, then you say, ‘Hey, we’ve got intel about this person who’s coming into your country. You might want to watch out for him.’ And we get that intel from allies when we have alliances. Hillary understands that. So our strength is about our own strength and the strength of our alliances.

Donald Trump sees this real differently. Donald Trump trashes the military, trashes Gold Star families, trashes POWs, trashes the generals, says, ‘I know more than all the generals,’ — he said that. When he’s asked, ‘Who do you consult with on foreign policy or national security?’ You know, ‘Mostly myself.’ But the thing that will really make Donald Trump dangerous — he doesn’t understand this alliance thing. He wants to tear up alliances. He says, ‘Well, we don’t need NATO anymore.’ So you throw the alliances aside. Then who’s going to share intelligence with you? Who’s going to tell you when someone’s coming to your country that you might want to watch out for? Building walls and tearing up alliances will make us weaker, not stronger, and that’s one of the reasons we have to elect Hillary Clinton as president.

Now, add to it this latest thing—which is almost surreal—which is Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s unusual fascination with Vladimir Putin. I mean, this is almost nightmare-scenario that Donald Trump, whose campaign chairman had to resign when it was revealed that he had ties, even illegal payment ties, to pro-Putin officials in the Ukraine and Russia. But Donald Trump is on TV—on a Commander in Chief forum two nights ago — basically praising Putin as a strong leader. And then, Mike Pence yesterday said, ‘Inarguably, Vladimir Putin is a better leader for his country than Barack Obama is for the United States.’

Alright, folks, two things about that. Two things about that. First: that irrational hostility toward President Obama, which started the very first day of his term from some of this people, is unpatriotic and we’ve got to call it out. If you can’t respect the office of the President of the United States as a United States citizen and you want to go around praising a dictator, you need to be called out as unpatriotic. And second: if you are going to pick someone to praise for leadership, Vladimir Putin has run the Russian economy into the ground. People are suffering there because of his mismanagement of the economy. Vladimir persecutes, punishes and has even been connected to the killing of journalists. Vladimir Putin is among the global leaders of people who really persecute people who are LGBT. Vladimir Putin violates international law by going into other nations like the Ukraine, or Georgia. I mean—and you think this is leadership? Apparently that’s what Donald Trump thinks, and apparently that’s what Mike Pence thinks. But I tell you this—if you can’t tell the difference between leadership and dictatorship, you wouldn’t have passed a fifth grade civics exam. You shouldn’t be a President of the United States. 

Dictatorship is not leadership. Tyranny—it’s not leadership. Persecution is not leadership. Tanking your economy is not leadership. And if you look at that and you see something you like, then you’re no leader either. You’re no leader either. Second issue. I’ve been here because ODU is a leading institution, pulling together great stakeholders to talk about climate change– to talk about sea level rise. To talk about what we need to do based on the science in our nation to make sure that we can protect our communities.

Hillary Clinton and I believe, I mean—now here’s a radical notion. We believe in science. We believe—that when—a street corner that wasn’t under water, but two or three hours a year 20 years ago is now under a water a lot—or when neighborhoods where people could buy and sell homes 20 years ago—now it’s hard to sell them. When those things happen, when the road ends in the naval base is increasingly underwater and to the greatest center of a naval power in the world– we know that something is happening, and as human beings, we’ve got to take some responsibility and do something about it.

We accept the science, and that’s why Hillary Clinton and I believe that we need to make wise investments in infrastructure to protect our assets and our cities. Like the cities in Hampton Roads and we also need to get smart about creating a clean energy economy—cleanertomorrow than today. We don’t have to throw the brakes on anything, but, let’s just innovate and get cleaner tomorrow than today and if we do that, we’ll not only save the environment, but we’ll create American jobs, and create technologies, and products and innovations we can sell to the rest of the world. That’s what we believe. That’s what we believe.

Now, Donald Trump—Donald Trump wrote a book and is giving interviews and what he has said about climate change—that it’s a hoax invented by the Chinese. He—he says—he doesn’t accept the science. Mike Pence doesn’t accept the science. Again, let’s go to leadership. If you cannot accept science, you’re no leader. You’re no leader, and it’s too dangerous to put the leadership of the greatest nation in the world into the hands of somebody who won’t accept science. And finally, finally on education—and let me just talk about higher education.” 

PARTICIPANT: […] 

TIM KAINE: “I’m Tim Kaine and I […]. Let me talk about college education. Now, we are here at a great institution ODU. My chief of staff, Mike Henry who’s here somewhere is an ODU graduate. So I have monarch pride in my office. Monarch pride. But we know that one of the challenges we’re confronting in this society about higher ed is cost. Cost for families. What’s happened, state budgets have been cut, and so states have not been able to put as much money into colleges, and if that happens, then colleges as they look at tuitions have to be higher and so students graduate with debt, and that debt can be a real challenge. We now have more student loan debt in the country than credit card debt.

This is a problem that every state, every college, public, private, every governor, every mayor is working on and dealing with. Hillary and I have a vision for the country where we could have debt free college. Now that’s a big vision, folks. That’s a big one. But, we can do it. We can do it because other nations do it. Other nations that aren’t as wealthy as we are, but who value education and skills, they say, ‘Look—we’re going to do it.’ And so we can do it too. And that’s part of our economic plan, it’s to invest in manufacturing, infrastructure, and research, but it’s also to invest in skills, whether it’s pre-K, or great teachers, or career and technical training, or debt free college. And this is what we are going to do. And this is a plan we have, and we are going to go at it in the first 100 days and try to lift that burden off students of student debt.

Now as far as I know, I don’t think the Trump team has rolled out a plan with respect to higher education yet. With respect to the cost, or the debt, or anything he hasn’t rolled out. But, he does have a little bit of a college track record with something called Trump University. Now, Trump University was an invented university that he marketed to people, ‘Hey if you want to be successful, give me tens of thousands of dollars.’ A lot of the people he marketed to were veterans. A lot of people gave him a lot of money and then they found themselves without something that was even worth the piece of paper it was written on, and so he’s getting sued all over the country for fraud, and in this suit, materials are coming out about the way they trained their staff and teachers to encourage students to give them more and more money, to sign up for more and more worthless classes. What kind of an education president would Donald Trump be when that’s his education track record?

And I’ll tell you, now more is coming out about Trump University. It was just disclosed that Donald Trump’s foundation, his charitable foundation, gave $25,000 to the attorney general of Florida. She was investigating Trump University. She was trying to – her office was looking at whether it was fraudulent. And so they took money from a charitable foundation that can’t be used for a political contribution – illegal. They made an illegal payment. And then they had to cover it up. They couldn’t acknowledge they’d made an illegal payment, so they filed at year-end a report suggesting that $25,000 didn’t go to the AG but it went to some charitable group in Kansas that never received one penny.

So an illegal contribution that was covered up to try to get somebody to not sue Trump University. Talk about pay-to-play. Talk about pay-to-play. And another one came out today. They found another contribution from Trump University of $100,000 to a group called Citizens United. Now, has anybody heard that? A wonderful – a wonderful charitable organization, Citizens United. And when they’ve dug into that $100,000 contribution, again, the Trump Foundation is supposed to be doing charitable work. Thank goodness the Clinton Foundation does charitable work fighting against AIDS, fighting against poverty all over the world.

But the latest story today is the Trump Foundation gave $100,000 to Citizens United. Why did they give it to Citizens United? Because Citizens United filed a lawsuit against the New York attorney general who was suing Trump University. So you give money to somebody who won’t sue, you give it to their campaign, but if an attorney general is investigating, you give money to a group to file a lawsuit against that attorney general. And they call this charity? They call this a charitable foundation? What kind of an education president is a Trump – is a Donald Trump presidency going to be when all he’s known for is Trump University and he’s using charitable funds to try to prop up his bogus, fraudulent, profit-making school? That’s what’s at stake in this election, folks. On military and veterans, huge differences. On climate science, huge differences. On education, huge differences. And there’s so many other issues, but you get the picture. This is deadly, deadly serious.

Now, we’ve got our future in our hands. Now, many of you are too young to remember this, but I see some others who are more like my age. It used to be in a presidential year, sadly, in Virginia we were not that competitive. It was a super-red state. Republicans didn’t need to campaign here because they were going to win. Democrats didn’t need to campaign here because why bother? They were going to lose. But it’s been this generation of Virginians that has worked us in right into the spotlight battleground state. Everybody around the nation takes a look at us to see what we’re doing. We’re back on center stage with the spotlight on.

Back in the day, before we were center stage, if you wanted to know who was president of the United States in Virginia, you would vote. The polls would close. But then you’d have to turn on the TV and see if there was a hanging chad in Florida or what was going on in Ohio with the Ohio secretary of state. I mean, we had to pay attention elsewhere. But the good news now, because we’re battleground in Virginia, we don’t need to worry about any other state. If we take care of business right here in the Commonwealth, then Hillary Clinton will be president and I’ll be the next vice president. And that’s the way it’ll be. That’s the way it’ll be. All we got to do it take care of business right here in Hampton Roads and all across the Commonwealth, and Hillary Clinton will be the next president.

Now, raise your hand if you have already volunteered to help the campaign. Okay. Give them a round of applause. That is a huge, huge group. A huge, huge group. If you haven’t and you want to, all you have to do is do this, text ‘together’ to 47246, ‘together,’ 47246. And if you do that, the campaign will reach out and they will ask you to help persuade other people. People are turned off to the TV ads these days because there are just too many of them. But they still believe in a word from a friend, a neighbor, a parishioner, a coworker, somebody you’re in school with. You can still persuade people. You can still answer questions. They’re hungry to talk about it because it’s important, but they don’t want to talk about it – or talk to a TV. They want to talk to a real person. So if you’re willing to volunteer, that will be hugely helpful.

And here’s the last – oh, and then remember this. Remember this. You can register to vote in Virginia up to October 17th. And I know there’s registration efforts going on here on campus and all across Hampton Roads. October 17th is the last day. And you can get absentee ballots if you’re not going to be here in Election Day, or start voting early in person. That starts not till October 29th and runs through Saturday, November 5th. Early in-person voting is something you can do, too. So that’s a way to help.

Let me just say this. I told you I was 8 and 0 in elections, and I told you I’m not going to lose this. But I’m going to tell you why I’m 8 and 0 because I’ve run very hard races. In fact, I tell people all the time I may be 8 and 0, but I don’t win by much. I mean, if I’m honest, I win by a little, not by a lot. I don’t feel like it’s fair to win by a landslide. It’s just not fair. And I also say for young people, for career advice, if you find that you’re just a barely likeable enough person, go into politics. You just got to get 51 percent. I mean, that’s been the secret of my success. I’m a barely likeable enough guy.

But the reality is, the way you win a tough race is you put this discipline in the back of your mind when you go into it. And the discipline is, I’m the underdog till I’m the winner. I’m the underdog until I’m the winner. And that’s what we should be feeling because, look, Hillary’s trying to do something that’s never been done. We know that there’s never been a woman president. But we also know we’re in a country where Congress is only 19 percent women. That’s the best we’ve ever been. That ranks us 75th in the world. Iraq is 26 percent. Afghanistan’s 28 percent. Rwanda, number one, is 64 percent. It has been hard for women to get elected to federal office in this country.

So that means what we’re trying to do over the next 60 days between now and November 8 is not going to be easy. And so I don’t care what any poll tells me. I like what I see in the polls right now, but I don’t care about any polls. We’re the underdog until they call us the winner. And that’s a good thing to think. As Democrats, we’re kind of underdog people. Right? We like to battle for the underdog. We like to battle for folks who aren’t given a fair shake and make sure that they do. And that’s a natural motive and motivation that we all have, and that’s what we need to win.

So let’s go out with that underdog spirit. Let’s do all we can and volunteer. Hampton Roads is a key battleground area in a key battleground state. You’ve shown you can do it. You did it in ‘08 and you did it in ‘12. We know, when you do your best work, things work out just fine. Let’s do our best work between now and November 8. We will make history on that day, and then go to work making history by doing the right things for the American public. Thanks so much!

Thanks so much! You guys are great!”