FAIRFAX, Va. — Sen. Tim Kaine says that with President Donald Trump in office, Americans are in a “living experiment” to see whether or not the Constitution still works to check executive power.

Given the roles that sons of the commonwealth played in crafting the Constitution, perhaps it is no surprise that a Virginia senator would make the case that the relevancy of the document itself will be tested by the 45th president.

Kaine, last year’s running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton against Trump, told a crowd of George Mason University students and staff gathered last Friday that the framers had among their primary objectives preventing tyranny from the executive branch.

“They were used to kings and emperors and monarchs, and they decided they wanted something very different,” Kaine said. “So the whole system was really set up largely to protect against an overreaching executive, and I have a feeling that the next four years are going to be a time of, ‘OK, after 230 years, does this thing still work?’ to achieve the goal that we wanted it to, which was to stop overreach.”

“We’re going to be a living experiment for that. It’s like we’ve taken our car in for the 230-year checkup,” Kaine said. “That’s what this is going to be here for the next couple of years.”