Hillary Clinton Introduces Tim Kaine As 'Everything Donald Trump And Mike Pence Are Not'

She said there's "no doubt" the senator is qualified to be vice president.
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Hillary Clinton made her first appearance with vice presidential pick, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), hailing him for being extremely qualified for the job and offering a stark contrast to Donald Trump and his VP choice.

A beaming Kaine took the stage with Clinton in Miami and sat behind the presumptive Democratic nominee after she introduced him on stage at the rally in Miami Saturday.

While Trump has called Mexicans “rapists,” vowed to build a wall and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, Kaine spoke in Spanish during his opening remarks. “Bienvenidos a todos en nuestro pais, porque somos Americanos todos,” he said. (“Welcome to all in our country, because we are all Americans.”) Kaine continued to pivot back and forth between Spanish and English throughout his comments and at one point thanked naturalized citizens in the audience for choosing to become United States citizens.

“Senator Tim Kaine is everything Donald Trump and Mike Pence are not,” Clinton said. “There’s no doubt in my mind, because I’m here with him, that Tim is qualified to be vice president.”

Echoing the language she used to describe herself during the presidential campaign, Clinton painted Kaine as a pragmatic progressive.

“He’s a progressive who likes to get things done. That’s my kind of guy, Tim.”

Clinton said that one of Kaine’s first cases as a lawyer was doing pro-bono work representing an African-American woman who had been denied an apartment because of her race. While Kaine was taking on housing discrimination, Trump was denying apartments to African Americans, Clinton added.

Noting that the NRA was headquartered in his state, Clinton said Kaine wouldn’t hesitate to push for gun control.

“Make no mistake, behind that smile, Tim also has a backbone of steel. Just ask the NRA,” she said. His voice rising, Kaine repeatedly said “we will not rest” until the U.S. has gun control.

Clinton also criticized the negative picture of America that Trump painted in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention and his claim that he alone could fix the country.

“When someone says I alone can fix it, that should set off alarm bells in not just Democrats’ minds, but Republicans’, independents’, people of all ages and backgrounds,” she said. “That is not a democracy,” she said.

The rally stood in stark contrast to Trump’s introduction of Pence, which was held at a Manhattan hotel last weekend. The GOP presidential candidate spoke mostly about himself for 30 minutes at the event before he got around to introducing his VP pick. And while Trump left the stage as soon as the Indiana governor stepped up to the lectern, Clinton sat behind Kaine as he spoke.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article mistranslated part of Kaine’s opening remarks as saying, “Welcome to our country.” In fact, he said, “Welcome to all in our country.”

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