See below for video of Sen. Tim Kaine’s appearance this morning on Fox “News” (in air quotes, because it’s most definitely not a news channel) Sunday. Thanks as always to Aaron Rupar for his tireless work in grabbing these important clips (also, h/t to these folks for grabbing the clip on Venezuela).
Sen. Tim Kaine on the U.S. military moves against Venezuela:
“Well, okay. So, the Trump administration or this particular witness, is saying this is about regime change. That is not something that a president should be deciding on his own, especially since America has often gotten regime change very very wrong when we have decided to do it. Often it leads to more instability, more migration. But I agree with my colleague Senator Paul. If we’re going to be in a war, whether it’s against boats in Nicaragua chosen off a secret list that the president won’t share with Congress or the public, or a land invasion in Venezuela, it should be done following a debate and a vote in Congress. The Ford strike group that’s being deployed has an awful lot of Virginians. They shouldn’t be sent in harm’s way unless Congress has the guts to vote about whether a war is in the national interest.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, re: the shutdown:
“There’s two issues that really are driving us. One is, the fact that folks’ healthcare premiums are spiking, largely because of the reconciliation bill that the Republicans passed in the summer. For example, in Virginia, if you are at 100% of poverty or below, you just got a notice this week that your health care premiums are going up by 2,000%. If you’re between 100% and 130%, slightly above the poverty level, your premium is going to go up by 95 percent. Even Republicans want to fix this. People are hurting now. Let’s fix it now. But the second issue that is important to me, and I don’t challenge Senator Fetterman saying that John Thune is an honorable guy. But here’s the challenge. We can’t do a deal with President Trump and then have him tear it up tomorrow and start mass firings or canceling programs that he doesn’t like or canceling programs that help blue states. We have to be sure that a deal is a deal. If we shake hands over a deal, Congress will follow it, will the president follow it? And we haven’t been able to get that assurance from the president. And that is not something that John Thune can assure us about. It’s up to President Trump to say that he’ll l live by a deal. Thus far, he’s not been willing to even discuss a deal, much less guarantee that he’ll live by one.”
