Tim Kaine: Trump’s remarks were ’embarrassing’

“[K]ind of talking out of both sides of his mouth in a way that I think the diplomacy side of it was kind of embarrassing, and then the speech last night was frightening and divisive,” the Virginia senator said in a Thursday morning interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Kaine slammed Trump for traveling all the way to Mexico to talk with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and then not talking about “the central piece of his whole campaign.”

“The central piece of his whole campaign is immigration, deportation nation, we’re going to build a wall, we’re going to make Mexico pay for it,” Kaine said. “But when he gets in the room with the president of Mexico, what, he forgets this? He’s been saying it and the Mexican president knows he’s been saying it. But he doesn’t bring it up? Did he choke? Was he afraid?”

Following the meeting between the two men in Mexico City, Trump told reporters: “We did discuss the wall. We didn’t discuss payment of the wall. That’ll be for a later date.”

But Pena Nieto later claimed the two had discussed the Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall and who would pay for it. “At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” Pena Nieto tweeted following their meeting.

Trump’s failure to discuss who will pay for the wall shows that “you can’t talk out of both sides of your mouth” and “kind of an embarrassing, amateur hour quality to the trip.”

Kaine called Trump’s immigration speech from Arizona one that has been given throughout history, “against the Irish, against Italian-American immigrants, against Jews coming from Eastern Europe.”

“It is deportation nation and they’re all criminals and they’re doing horrible things — that is not going to make our country great,” Kaine explained. “The continuous flow of new energy and new ideas has made our country great, our nation of immigrants. And Donald Trump wants to be deportation nation, but that’s not going to help us.”