Exclusive – GOP Virginia Senate Candidate Hung Cao: Democrats ‘Crossed the Rubicon’ by Going After Parents

WASHINGTON, DC – Navy Special Operations Veteran Hung Cao, who is running for U.S. Senate in Virginia, slammed Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and other “career politicians,” contending they “have forgotten” that they work for the American people and “have forgotten the values of God, family, and country.”  

Cao, a retired Navy captain, sat down with Breitbart News for an exclusive interview on Tuesday in the nation’s capital, where he stated that politicians like Kaine, who was twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, answered to special interest groups. 

“Career politicians like Tim Kaine have forgotten who they work for,” Cao said of the Democrat he seeks to unseat. “They work for the American people, and they have forgotten the values of God, family, and country, and that’s the biggest problem we have with these politicians. They are subservient to the special interest groups and not to the American people.”

“And I’ll be very honest, in Virginia, especially, they made the biggest mistake by putting themselves – they being the leftists – putting themselves between the parent and the child,” Cao said. “We all know Democrats will tax you and do all this stuff, inflation, and it hurts all Americans, but I’m telling you right now that the moment you put yourself between a parent and their child, that’s where you’ve crossed the Rubicon, and you can’t come back.”

Cao, whose family escaped the communist regime in Vietnam in 1975, days before Saigon fell, noted that the term “mama bears” is often used to describe how mothers will look after and protect their children, but also emphasized the might of “daddy lions.” 

“People talk about the mama bears, and I’m afraid of mama bears, but don’t forget about the daddy lions,” he said. “The lion is the king of the jungle. It’s the most powerful animal out there. It’s the apex predator, and a lion doesn’t have to roar much, but when it does, you can hear it for five miles. Do you want to hear me roar? Take on my children, and you will hear me roar for miles to come.” 

In his opening campaign advertisement, Cao drew parallels between the Biden administration’s Justice Department and his family’s experiences in Vietnam, where both of his grandfathers were taken from his parents “in the middle of the night,” with the government knocking at the door as a common theme between the two. 

“That’s the sound of losing your freedom. The sound of always living in fear,” Cao said in the ad.

After serving 25 years in the U.S. Navy, I recognize that our country has real problems and we need real fighters in Washington. I’m running for United States Senate because I’m not done fighting for us. pic.twitter.com/IYVmIh1V2c

— Hung Cao (@HungCao_VA) July 18, 2023

When asked on Tuesday about the parallels he sees between the two, he referred to a National School Board Association (NSBA) letter sent to President Joe Biden in September 2021 targeting parents who were expressing concerns about their children’s education as “domestic terrorists” which prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into the matter. 

Emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act allege Education Secretary Miguel Cardona solicited the letter from the NSBA, as Breitbart News noted. 

“In Loudoun County, they tried to classify parents as domestic terrorists,” Cao said. “You’re equating me to a Hamas, to ISIS, to al Qaeda, really? Domestic terrorists? I mean, this is wrong in so many ways, and they know it; we all know it. It’s almost like they can’t help themselves.” 

“We raise our children the way we want to raise them,” he added. “That’s why we’re in America. That’s why my family came here. That’s why a lot of families came here: to raise our children the way we see fit, the way we want to do it, the best way we know how. But for the government to come in and say, ‘Oh, no, we know better than you,’ it goes against what we believe in as a country.”