When Donald Trump talks about Mexican-Americans and Hispanic groups, he sounds like the people who opposed Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants to the United States, according to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.
The vice presidential candidate’s remarks came Thursday as he and his wife, Anne Holton, stopped in Dover, N.H., as part of an extended tour of the Granite State.
Trump went “on a rampage” with “words of division, trashing people who are Mexican-American,” Kaine said in reference to the GOP nominee’s immigration speech Wednesday evening.
Kaine said Trump is “basically saying things about them that people have said about the Irish, or about the Italians or about Jews coming from Central and Eastern Europe.”
“Pretty much any group that has come into this country that has made our nation such a fantastic nation, they faced a few people who were saying bad things about them,” Kaine said. “Who said, ‘No Irish need apply’ or others. And that was the speech that Donald Trump gave last night.”
Kaine also mocked Trump for his performance Wednesday in a joint press conference with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Trump said then that he and Pena Nieto did not discuss the GOP nominee’s oft-repeated promise to build a wall on America’s southern border and make Mexico pay for it.
But Pena Nieto’s office has released a statement since then alleging he stated unequivocally in his private meeting with Trump that Mexico would never pay for the wall. Trump campaign hasn’t quite disputed this claim, and said in its own a statement that a “negotiation” would have been “inappropriate.”
“[W]e look forward to continue the conversation,” the Trump campaign said.
“[Trump] has been talking non-stop since the beginning of his campaign, ‘We’re going to build a wall, we’re going to make Mexico pay for it,'” Kaine said. “But when he sat down, and he looked President Pena Nieto in the eye, he didn’t have the guts to bring that up.”
“[I]t was like he choked. He caved. He lost his confidence. He lost his will,” he said. “We all know people like that, right? We all know people that who are all they’re going to talk a good game, but when the chips are down … they fold like an accordion, and that’s what Donald Trump did yesterday.”
