Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine said that a trove of leaked emails unveiled by WikiLeaks was a “propaganda effort” by Russia to influence the presidential election.
“The motive for them is very, very important for Americans to understand,” Kaine said Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
It remains unconfirmed from who exactly WikiLeaks received the leaked e-mails from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, though national security analysts have said they were stolen by hackers at the direction of the Russian government. The Clinton campaign claims that 17 intelligence agencies confirm that Russia was behind a separate hack of the Democratic National Committee.
Kaine, who is Catholic, sounded off on an email unearthed from WikiLeaks that had a Clinton spokeswoman from 2011 joking about Catholics and Evangelicals, describing them as a “bastardization of faith.”
“Hillary Clinton’s feeling about faith and Catholicism in particular is most demonstrated by the fact that she asked me to be her running mate,” he responded to a question from host Chuck Todd about what to say to Catholics who were offended by the remarks in the emails.
