U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who can come across as a Vichy Democrat, has been on a roll of giving hell to Trump nominees of late.
It’s easy to forget that Kaine could very well be president right now – hear me out: he was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, she should have won, if she had, she coasts to re-election, and in 2024, her VP is right there, first in line.
Flip side: he’s not even lieutenant governor in Virginia if Emily Couric doesn’t get cancer.
OK, so, just sayin’, we like this Tim Kaine who gives Trump nominees hell a lot better than the one who just votes to confirm them.
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First wrath of hell moment this week: Hal Duncan, the unfortunate nominee to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Duncan’s resume screams shift supervisor at the car wash across town, but he’s a loyal MAGA.
How loyal?
“Was the 2024 presidential election rigged?”
That was Kaine, at Duncan’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Duncan’s response: “Senator, President Trump won the 2024 presidential election.”
Duncan had just declined, twice, to address the 2020 election.
I may need to take back my recommendation for him for the car wash job.
“Yeah, folks, how about that?” Kaine pounced. “So, he was asked twice, was the 2020 presidential election rigged? And he said, President Biden was certified to be the winner. He wouldn’t answer the question. Saying President Biden was certified as the winner of that election is like saying today is Tuesday, June 16. I mean, it’s obviously it’s a fact, but he wouldn’t acknowledge that President Biden won that race.
“Now, there’s only one of two reasons, Mr. Duncan,” Kaine continued. “You have either fallen victim to the conspiracy mindset that says that that election was rigged, and if you’re a conspiracy theorist, you shouldn’t be let anywhere near the position you’ve been nominated for, or you know President Biden won the election, but you’re afraid of making an insecure president mad by acknowledging that fact.
“You answered so easily when I asked you the question about 2024. You didn’t fight, you didn’t evade, you didn’t obscure, you didn’t try an end run. You said President Trump won the election, which he did. He won the popular vote. He won the Electoral College. The answer was just as simple about 2020. The fact that you were unable to give this simple answer about 2020 raises real serious questions.”
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Second bout of hell: a throwdown with Kari Lake, the unnecessarily smug former local TV anchor who failed her way up to a series of jobs in TrumpWorld after losing in campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate in Arizona.
Now Trump is trying to get her to be the ambassador to Jamaica, because, sure, why not.
Kaine pressed her on repeated statements about Ruben Gallego, who defeated her in their 2024 Senate race, in which she tries to claim that Gallego is “controlled by the cartels.”
Fact check: Gallego’s estranged father was a Colombian drug trafficker.
The dad left the family when Gallego was young – and as Gallego said, today, after the moment in the hearing involving Kaine, that his mother took the lead after her husband left, and Gallego “made my own way, and built a life he had no part in,” and noted that “there are thousands of American boys doing the same thing right now, growing up determined to be better men than the fathers who left them.”
Back to Kaine: he termed Lake’s repeated insistence that Gallego’s long-estranged father is a relevant issue today as being “undiplomatic behavior.”
“You had no evidence, then, nor do you have any evidence now, that our colleague Sen. Gallego is controlled by cartels, do you, Ms. Lake?” Kaine said.
“Well, we provided the receipts,” Lake began her defense of the indefensible. “The father was a high-level drug trafficker, trafficking hundreds of thousands of dollars …”
“You said that Ruben Gallego was controlled by the cartels. You provided no evidence,” Kaine interrupted. “You had no evidence, then, and you have no evidence now that Ruben Gallego is controlled by cartels. Isn’t that right?”
LAKE: “I don’t know, and I’m not here to do reputational control or reputational repair.”
KAINE: “OK, how about an apology for our colleague? If you made that claim he was controlled by cartels, and now you’re saying you don’t know what the facts are, then you’re acknowledging that your charge was wrong. How about apologizing to our colleague?”
LAKE: “I don’t believe my charge was wrong. Ruben Gallego’s father is a high-level trafficker.”
KAINE: “You asserted he was controlled by cartels. You had no evidence then, you have no evidence now, you’re unwilling to admit it. And here’s something that’s even worse, Mr. Chair. That was during the heat of a campaign. Sometimes we say things during campaigns that, we go too far. She’s continued to repeat this as a sitting member of the Trump administration. A couple months ago, Ruben Gallego put out a tweet against the invasion of Venezuela. He didn’t mention Ms. Lake. He just said he was against it. And she, at 2:35 in the morning the following day, responded, ‘You are a member of a Mexican cartel family. You are also a fraud. No one is surprised by your take.’ She’s continuing to repeat a lie! She just told the committee she has no idea whether it’s true or false, but she was glad to say it, and she won’t retract it now. That should be disqualifying.”
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We need more of this Tim Kaine going forward.
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Chris Graham
