Dem Sen. Kaine Worries About Trump Having ‘Levers of Power’ Unlike in 2016 — ‘Makes Me Very, Very Nervous’

Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) expressed worry of President Donald Trump having “levers of power” after he was “very willing to take advantage” of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Kaine said on “MSNBC Live” with the coronavirus pandemic still ongoing and after seeing Wednesday’s Twitter hacks that he is “very, very nervous” to see what could happen with “a foreign adversary messing up our election.”

“I do worry about it. I’ll express a worry first but then a positive,” Kaine responded when asked about his concern for the upcoming election. “I mean, look on the worry side, a candidate Trump with no levers of power at the time was very willing to take advantage publicly encouraged and then willing to take advantage of a foreign adversary messing up our election. Well, now he has levers of power. He controls things that he didn’t control four years ago, and that makes me very, very nervous. You add to it coronavirus will make people afraid to go to the polls, or more susceptible to misinformation, we have legitimate and significant concerns.”

“I will say this, the DOD, again, as a member of the Armed Services Committee faced significant attacks from Russia in the 2018 elections,” he continued. “They’ve talked about it a little bit, not a lot, but they have talked about some publicly. And I am very aware of it. I was on the ballot in 2018 running for reelection in Virginia. Our DOD did a very good job of repelling foreign attacks on the 2018 election — not just stopping them from occurring, because that’s not really deterrence. When you detect an incoming attack, you have to take affirmative steps to make the attacker pay a price. The Obama administration didn’t do that in 2016, even though they were aware of the attack. They didn’t make Russia pay a price. We did make Russia pay a price in 2018, and that has a way of deterring attacks to some degree. So, I do feel there’s some part of the federal family, the DOD, that is going to work very hard to get this right, but there’s an awful lot that can go wrong, and that’s one of the reasons I’m strongly supporting it as part of a COVID bill, more support for states to protect the infrastructure of their elections for November.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent