Tim Kaine speaks to students on the Florida A&M University campus in Tallahassee, Florida on August 26. | AP Photo Kaine links Trump to 'Ku Klux Klan values'

Picking up where his running mate Hillary Clinton left off a day earlier in her speech tying Donald Trump to far-right fringe politics, Tim Kaine said Friday that “Ku Klux Klan values, David Duke values, Donald Trump values are not American values.”

Speaking at a voter registration event at historically black Florida A&M University, the Virginia senator once again tied Trump to Duke, the former Louisiana state legislator and KKK grand wizard. Duke has been effusive in his praise of Trump, saying at one point that "voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage.”


Offered an opportunity to repudiate Duke’s endorsement during an interview on CNN, Trump initially said he wasn't familiar with his views, although he said in subsequent interviews, “I don’t need his endorsement; I certainly wouldn’t want his endorsement.”

At his Friday rally, Kaine said Clinton’s speech had called “him out on the fact that he has supporters like David Duke, connected with the Ku Klux Klan, who are going around and saying Donald Trump is their candidate because Donald Trump is pushing their values.”

“Ku Klux Klan values, David Duke values, Donald Trump values are not American values,” he continued. “They’re not our values, and we’ve got to do all we can to fight to push back and win, to say that we’re still about heading towards that North Star that we set out so long ago.”

In her speech Thursday, Clinton said Trump has a "long history of racial discrimination" and accused him of trafficking "in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the Internet." Trump shot back that such accusations of racism represented a "tired, disgusting argument" that Democratic politicians rely on to discredit opponents.

Kaine also attacked Trump for being “a main guy behind the scurrilous and I would say bigoted notion that President Obama wasn’t even born in this country.” He compared Trump’s ties to white supremacist groups and the lawsuit filed against him for discriminatory housing practices with Clinton’s work for the Children’s Defense Fund and Kaine’s own work as a civil rights attorney.

Of that comparison, Kaine said, “That’s the difference in this election, and that’s the stakes.”

In a statement, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus condemned Kaine's remarks.

“Tim Kaine sunk to new lows with dirty and deplorable attacks which have no place in this campaign. No matter how desperate he is to distract from his running mate Hillary Clinton’s litany of corruption scandals, there is no excuse for these vile and baseless smears.”

