Kaine rips Trump camp for praising Putin

Hillary Clinton’s running mate said Friday his “heart sunk” when he heard Donald Trump’s running mate Mike Pence say Russian President Vladimir Putin is a stronger leader than President Barack Obama.

“What about invading other countries is leadership? What about running our economy into the ground is leadership? What about persecuting LGBT Russians is leadership? What about setting up journalists and imprisoning them and killing them is leadership? There is a difference between dictatorship and leadership,” Kaine said, appearing on CBS This Morning. “If you didn’t understand that you wouldn’t get out of a fifth grade civics exam.”


The comments Pence made in California on Thursday followed Trump’s comments during NBC’s Commander-In-Chief forum on Wednesday night, in which he praised Putin.

Kaine, when asked if he believes that Russians are trying to hack and influence the outcome of the election, he said “it’s very clear” that Russia was behind the hack of DNC emails.

Their motive, he said, is “to delegitimize the election.”

He also compared the Republican nominee to former President Richard Nixon for comments he made following the DNC hack, in which Trump suggested — sarcastically, he noted, after the fact — that Russia find Clinton’s deleted emails.

“When Donald Trump went on the air publicly and said to the Russians ‘hack away and if you find something that helps me out, let me have it’ … we impeached a president for what he has encouraged Russia to do.”

