Tim Kaine’: President Trump Is A Tyrant’ Here’s What We Can Do About It

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During Wednesday’s Senate Democrats’ ‘Ask Me Anything’ Virtual Event, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) discussed President Trump.

Transcript

00:00Hmm. Anne has asked a question on Facebook. Okay. What about Trump becoming king is allowed in the

00:08bill? Okay. So there's a bunch of different ways I can take that, I guess. First, no kings, right?

00:18I mean, you might see I'm wearing the Virginia state seal on my suit, and it's a woman representing

00:25virtue standing atop a toppled monarch with his crown falling off. And the motto says,

00:32thus be it always to tyrants. Our nation was established to make sure we didn't have tyrants.

00:39And look, President Trump is a tyrant. And his only limitation, he'll do whatever he wants,

00:45his only limitation is what we as active citizens in a democracy put up as limitations around his

00:52tyranny. One provision that I'm particularly focused on in the House bill would essentially

00:59prohibit courts from holding administration officials in contempt when they violate court

01:06orders. That's sort of kingly behavior. I'm above the law. President Trump thinks he's above the law.

01:11And the House is doing his bidding by putting a provision in the bill that essentially would

01:17insulate them from civil contempt charges if they ignore court orders. So that's kingly behavior that

01:23we're not going to accept. We're going to beat that here in the Senate. Let's see. Is there a next

01:28question? Okay. Well, the next question is coming in. I do just want to go back to this question about

01:33SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare. I went to the Fredericksburg Area Regional Food Bank in Virginia. It's about 70

01:40months south of DC on Monday. And I had a roundtable with 15 people or so. Half of them were from

01:46organizations like the food bank and churches that provide food to hungry people and half were SNAP

01:52recipients. And one of the things they said, and this was echoed in a spotlight hearing that we had

01:57earlier today. If you take away somebody's SNAP benefit, it's like pulling a thread that starts

02:04to unravel the whole fabric of protection of the safety net. Because if you qualify for SNAP benefits,

02:12that also means you can qualify for Medicaid, for Head Start, for school lunch programs. You don't have

02:17to, you know, separately qualify for all these programs. So any SNAP cut also ends up affecting

02:24all kinds of other basic programs that people really rely on. And that's what the R's are doing,

02:31pulling on that thread of SNAP and starting to unravel the whole fabric of basic safety net protection

02:38that we put in place in a humane and compassionate way. Okay. Lori asked a good one on Facebook. What

02:44would the Democrats support that would improve Medicaid? What improvements would you propose?

02:51Look, we have dramatically improved Medicaid during the time I've been here by doing the Affordable Care

02:57Act, which allowed states, didn't require them, allowed states to expand Medicaid to cover more people.

03:02That Medicaid expansion in Virginia meant that about 400,000 people now in Virginia have health

03:09insurance that didn't have it before. Many had never had it before, and now they do it. So things we can

03:15do to expand coverage are positive. We also did, the Democrats did a really important thing with

03:22Medicaid during the last administration. We expanded Medicaid coverage for moms post-delivery.

03:29We had a maternal mortality problem in this country, the death of a mom in the first year

03:36after the delivery of a child, which leaves the child without a mother. And our maternal mortality

03:42rate is awful compared to other comparable nations. One of the reasons for that is we allowed Medicaid to

03:49cover a low-income mom delivering a baby, but that coverage cut off after 60 days. And an awful lot

03:56of postpartum conditions just get worse and worse and worse. Democrats, without a single Republican vote,

04:02Democrats expanded Medicaid coverage for moms post-delivery from 60 days to a year. And so that's a

04:09significant improvement. So those are the kinds of things that Democrats have done. In this particular

04:16bill, the reconciliation, frankly, we're probably not going to be able to advance more on Medicaid,

04:23but what we need to do is save the gains on Medicaid that we've fought so hard for that have enabled

04:29so many more people to have high-quality care. Let's see if there's a next question up. And I've

04:35got an exciting thing to announce to you. The person who's going to follow me is somebody who I really,

04:42really admire. But I'm going to see if there's another question before I introduce her. All right,

04:47it looks like I shouldn't. Okay, I'm going to introduce her. I'm seeing that coming up on the

04:51screen. Catherine Cortez Masto is a great friend. She is the senator from Nevada, as you all know.

04:57She was an attorney general in Nevada before. And she's somebody who really plays lead with us

05:03on so many issues in the Senate. She's a no-nonsense, practical, can make it plain. And now my friend,

05:10Catherine Cortez Masto is going to come here and make it plain for you. Thanks. Hey, Catherine.

05:15Thank you so much. You're back. Good job.

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