Kaine Defends Clinton Leaked Transcript Calling Immigration Opposition ‘Un-American’

On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week,” Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails in which she said, “People who oppose immigration are fundamentally un-American,” was “contrary to the best values of our country.”

Partial transcript as follows:

RADDATZ: Let’s talk about the hacked e-mails of the Clinton campaign chair, John Podesta, the WikiLeaks hack.  One of the things in those emails that she apparently said in a Goldman Sachs speech, she said, “People who oppose immigration are fundamentally un-American.” Your reaction?

KAINE: Well, look, we’re a nation of immigrants. And if you look at the Declaration of Independence, when we broke from England, one of the Bill of Particulars against King George is we’ve got to be independent because King — the king won’t let us have a working immigration system. We are a nation of immigrants. We have to have a functioning immigration system. And for anybody whose family, you know, probably came from somewhere else a few generations to say, OK, but now we’re going to put up the drawbridge and not let anybody else in, I don’t think that’s in accord with the values of our nation. Now we ought to have rules —

RADDATZ: So it’s — so it’s un-American?

KAINE: — and regulations and that’s what Hillary and I want to do.

RADDATZ: So it’s un-American?

KAINE: To say that there should be no — to say that there should be no immigration, yes, that is definitely contrary to the best values of our country that were laid out in the Declaration of Independence and since.

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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