Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine kept up the attack on Donald Trump on Monday, and said he’s not going to let go of the fact the GOP nominee spent years questioning whether President Obama was really born in the United States.
“We are not going to let him move on to the next issue,” the Virginia lawmaker said Monday at a campaign rally in Ames, Iowa. “This is not just a wacky guy saying wacky stuff. This is incredibly painful to millions of people.”
The Clinton team is highlighting Trump’s years long embracing of the so-called birther movement, and they say it’s not good enough the Republican candidate stated last week he believes Obama was born in America.
At the root of Trump’s playing around with theories alleging Obama was really born in Kenya is an ugly and pernicious bigotry, Kaine told his audience in Iowa.
“When Donald Trump decides about the first African-American president of this country, to repeatedly go after him and say, ‘You are not a citizen of the United States,’ he’s basically hauling us back to the most painful chapter in the life of this nation,” Kaine said.
“Why would someone like Donald Trump want to drag us back to that painful chapter in in American life, when if you were African-American you couldn’t be a citizen?” the Virginia senator asked.
Trump claimed last week at an event in Washington, D.C., that he believes the president was born in the United States. The GOP nominee, who was touting Obama-was-born-in-Kenya theories as recently as 2014, also accused Clinton of creating “birtherism.”
The Republican candidate’s claim that Clinton started the “birther” movement has drawn flunking grades from the nation’s fact-checkers, but it’s not exactly black and white.
Clinton and her team spent much of last week accusing Trump of being the de facto king of birthers.
On Monday, Kaine kept up the attack.
“[Trump] either believed in what he was saying, in which case he’s just about the most gullible and conspiratorial person who has ever run for office,” Kaine said. “So somebody needs to ask him: Did you really believe it that when you were saying it, cause if you did, you are either completely gullible or completely conspiratorial or probably both. Or you never believed it.”
“You always knew what the facts were, but what you’re doing is you’re trying to whip up a sentiment, an anger, a set of feelings that would take us back to the worst chapter in American life.”
The vice presidential candidate said that even if Trump disowns his previous support for birtherism, people need to keep after him for all the years he played around with the theory.
“So I’m not letting this thing go because I think having somebody in the Oval Office as president who seems so willing for five years to drag us back to most painful chapter in American life, that scares me to death,” he said.
