Powerful Clinton Allies Launch Coordinated Attack On Trump VP Mike Pence

Powerful groups allied with Hillary Clinton on Friday debuted lines of attack they plan to roll out this fall against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and the man named Friday as his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

“A Trump-Pence administration would be catastrophic for the country,” House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said during a conference call Friday. If Trump were to win the White House, “it would set the country back, and continue the tea party mentality that Mr. Pence brought with him to Congress.”

Trump earlier in the day confirmed that Pence, a former five-term Indiana congressman, would be his running mate in the general election.

The news served to energize a wide range of progressive groups, which drew parallels between how Pence governs Indiana, and how a Trump administration might govern America.

“Mike Pence represents the face of LGBTQ hate in America, and the face of anti-LGBTQ discrimination,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “Now, he’s the face of the GOP ticket.”

As a member of Congress, Pence opposed the Employee Non-Discrimination Act in 2003, a bill designed to prohibit discrimination against LGBT workers. As governor of Indiana, Pence signed a controversial 2015 bill that allowed business owners to refuse service to customers who they felt violated their religious beliefs.

As Molly Redden explained in Mother Jones, the law also gave legal cover to “an employer who refused to hire Jewish employees ... or a landlord who refused to rent to Muslims, or a business that refused to serve atheists.”

“Trump-Pence is the greatest threat the LGBTQ community has ever faced in a presidential election,” Griffin said.

Pence’s record on women’s reproductive rights is even more troubling to progressives.

Earlier this year, Trump angered people on both sides of the abortion debate when he said abortions should be banned, and women seeking banned abortions should be punished.

“Pence puts Trump’s most extreme promises into practice,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “Trump promised to punish women who sought abortions. But in Pence’s Indiana, Trump’s threat has become reality.”

Hogue was referring to the case of Purvi Patel, a young Indiana woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year for attempting an at-home abortion. Indiana law allows women to be charged with infanticide if they attempt to terminate a pregnancy.

“Trump-Pence might as well be trying to make misogyny great again,” Hogue said, poking fun at Trump’s campaign slogan. “As women, we’re not a special interest group. We’re the majority of American voters.”

On the subject of workers, Liz Schuller of the AFL-CIO said that despite Trump’s claims that he is a friend of working-class voters, “with Pence, we can see Trump’s true colors. Trump [and Pence] both think our wages are too high, and they both support [union-busting] right-to-work” laws.

When it comes to jobs and trade policy, both Trump and Pence have spent most of their careers working to expand free trade policies, whether on Capitol Hill, in the case of Pence, or in court, for Trump.

As a candidate, however, Trump has done a total about-face on trade, backing protectionist, exclusionary trade policies that he claims will protect U.S. jobs from foreign competition. “He is dangerous, divisive, and unfit to be president,” Hogue said.

Overall, the big message from the Democratic-aligned groups was that Pence’s Indiana offers a good preview of what voters could expect under a Trump presidency.

“When Pence went back to Indiana [to run for governor], people saw a lack of compassion,” Clyburn said.”And it’s going to be incumbent upon [Democrats] to highlight his record to the American people.”

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.