CBS "Face the Nation" - Transcript: Criminal Justice

Interview

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BRENNAN: You have said that Virginia has a lot of scar tissue when it comes to race.

SEN. TIM KAINE (D), VIRGINIA: Yes.

BRENNAN: But it feels, on many of these issues, that it`s very much an open wound. What has actually changed since Charlottesville?

KAINE: I think what has changed is, Charlottesville was shocking. It was shocking that a local guy like a Jason Kessler would have called this Unite the Right rally.

And it was shocking that people from out of state would come in and intending...

BRENNAN: He was a UVA grade.

KAINE: He was -- he`s a local guy.

But most of the people arrested for violence that day were out-of-staters who came in to bring their hatred and bigotry. And that was shocking.

And what I see that has changed a good bit in Virginia, Margaret, is people standing up and saying, we`re not going to let our state be defined this way, energetic activism. It was seen most directly in the Virginia elections in November of 2017.

We elected a statewide ticket, including the second African-American elected to statewide office, Justin Fairfax. We elected -- Democrats elected more members of the Lower Legislative House than any in year since the 1870s.

And who was elected? Of the 15 people that got elected with this energetic turnout, 11 of the 15 were women, African-American, Asian American, Latino American, immigrant-born, LGBT, transgender. It was a real rainbow coalition of who the Virginia of today is.

BRENNAN: And yet Corey Stewart, the man running against you, wants to protect Confederate monuments. That`s countering what you`re describing.

KAINE: They`re -- yes, it is. But, again, look who won last year. It wasn`t the people who want to secede or go backwards who are winning elections.

Charlottesville was a shock. And what I think it has created is an energy of people of goodwill standing up and saying, there will not be hate. Hate will not define who we are. We`re on a path of progress, and we`re going to stay there.

BRENNAN: When you mayor of Richmond, though...

KAINE: Yes.

BRENNAN: ... you dealt with some of these questions about how to represent...

KAINE: All the time.

BRENNAN: ... the Confederacy here.

KAINE: All the time.

BRENNAN: This was the capital of the Confederacy.

KAINE: Yes. Right.

BRENNAN: Does it trouble you that those monuments are still standing?

KAINE: It doesn`t trouble me that they`re still standing. It means we have to always be in dialogue about our history in the right way to represent the...

BRENNAN: The rallying point, though, that last year for the Unite the Right rally was the question of the removal of Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville.

KAINE: That was not it, Margaret.

I want to challenge you on that. Charlottesville was not about statues. It was about hatred. It was about bigotry and division. This was not a save the statue rally. It was a Unite the Right rally.

Statues don`t make you march around chanting, "Jews will not replace us." They don`t make you say blood and soil or other slogans from Nazi youth rallies.

I think the thing that`s important, though, about Charlottesville is to say it`s about statues kind of diminishes the gravity of it.

BRENNAN: Nationwide now, there`s a lot of conversation generally about race, but from President Trump himself, he makes the argument that the unemployment rate, the jobless rate for the African-American community is at a record low.

He frequently cites statistics to make the point that he`s improving lives for the African-American community and for minorities. Do you think he has created real opportunity?

KAINE: No, no. I think he`s been a failure.

I -- the unemployment rate is low generally. That`s good. It was coming down when he took office. That`s good. So I gave him that.

He doesn`t get all the credit for it, because it was coming down significantly when he took office.

But how about -- how about gaps in income? They are significant. How about gaps in wealth? They are significant.

And what I think I`m most concerned about with this president is his penchant to divide us, to attack people because they`re immigrants, to attack people because of their religion, to attack minorities, to use -- to use vulgar language to describe countries where people come who might be Latino or African.

There is a concerted effort that he has been engaged in to divide people, including dividing them based on race. And nowhere was that more obvious, nowhere, than in the aftermath of Charlottesville.

When somebody drove a car into a crowd in Columbus, Ohio, between his election and when he was inaugurated, and that somebody happened to be somebody from the Middle East, he called it terrorism and went to Columbus to comfort families who had been injured.

When somebody of a Middle Eastern background drove a car into a crowd in Barcelona, he called it terrorism.

But when this happened in Charlottesville, 90 miles from the White House, in the home of an archetypal American president, suddenly, he says, well, there`s good people on both sides.

He could not distinguish who was on the right side and who was on the wrong side in a white supremacist neo-Nazi rally. And that was infuriating. Virginians really saw that for what it was, because a state that`s been scarred like we have with the divisions of racism and hatred and slavery in the past, when we have a president who can`t call it out, it was outrageous.

The people who came to Charlottesville to demonstrate their hatred, they, I`m sure, had those emotions before there was a President Trump. But he`s stoking it. And I think that`s very, very damning that he does that.

BRENNAN: Why do you think that? Why do you think he`s stoking that? Do you think he`s racist?

KAINE: I don`t know him. I do not know him. I have no idea about who he is as a person.

So, whether it`s a sincere feeling, or whether he thinks it gets him some political edge or gain, I don`t know the answer. But I don`t know which of those two is worse.

If it`s not your view, but you do it to try to get a political edge and you try to stoke division, in some ways, that`s every bit as morally bad as holding views that are -- that are bigoted or racist.

BRENNAN: Do you think that embracing this idea of identity politics is something that Democrats like yourself should be doing?

KAINE: I don`t call it identity politics.

I know there`s a critique that, for Dems, it`s identity politics or its political correctness.

Here`s what I would say. It`s equality. Jefferson put equality into the Declaration of Independence as America`s North Star. Now, he was an imperfect person. He couldn`t live it. But at least he was farsighted enough to see. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, is the first truth.

We got to be true to the equality principle. And we have to reject division and embrace equality. That`s not identity politics. That`s not political correctness. That`s being true to the fundamental Virginia and American values that equality is the North Star we should pursue.

BRENNAN: But advisers to the president, past advisers, like Steve Bannon, have said the more Democrats talk and focus on issues of identity, issues of race, that it`s a political benefit, because the message is, we`re about actually improving people`s lives, economic nationalism, and that`s going to continue to win for Republicans.

KAINE: I`m not telling any Republican or any elected official what to say.

But what I am saying is, as a nation, if we`re not -- if we`re not committed to equality, what are we committed to? We`re imperfect people. We may never get to equality in the -- in the pure sense of it, but that`s got to be our North Star.

And if somebody says, oh, that`s identity politics, or that`s political correctness, you just say no. If we`re not for equality as a nation, what are we? Of course we are. That`s the very foundation of what we are.

BRENNAN: Does that extend to the criminal justice system?

Your Democratic colleague Elizabeth Warren says it`s 100 percent racist front to back.

KAINE: There is -- there are deep, deep challenges.

Is it -- does it...

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BRENNAN: You agree with her?

KAINE: Oh, I -- it -- there are systemic racial inequities in the criminal justice system, absolutely.

So, when I`m saying we have this policy, we`re not living it perfectly in any sphere. Criminal justice, I think, would be one where there are significant problems.

Look at the disproportionate incarceration rates. Now, to say the entire system is racist, hey, I know fantastic professionals, law enforcement professionals, judges, prosecutors who are doing their best every day to reduce inequality.

But if you just look at the results, the outcome, who is incarcerated?

BRENNAN: You have raised the issue of race and discrimination as directly tied to how the president discusses immigration as a national security threat.

KAINE: Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm.

BRENNAN: What do you mean by that? Because he makes the case, this is just about security, this is just about stopping child traffickers, and he`s about rule of law.

KAINE: He used vulgar language to describe certain countries. He uses unfair stereotypes, Mexicans are rapists and criminals. I mean, give me a break.

He will suggest that everybody who comes to the border is a member of MS-13. Give me a break. I mean, the statistics show that that`s not true.

So when somebody perpetuates a stereotype that`s false, you have to ask, why are they doing that? And I think he is -- he is stoking division. And it`s against folks from Third World countries, folks whose skin color are different than his, folks whose religion he doesn`t approve of.

What we need...

BRENNAN: Yet the Supreme Court upheld the travel ban that was predominantly applied to Muslim-majority countries.

KAINE: They upheld version three, after version one was struck down, after version two was struck down. They finally did a version that could limp across the finish line in the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote.

But even in that approval, the court called out the president`s language. I mean, look, the burden that`s on the shoulder of any of us in leadership now is to try to pull this country together, not -- not divide people.

What I challenge the president on is, I don`t think he`s behaving like a for-all guy. He is behaving in a way that divides people from one another. And we got to have leaders at all levels who stand up and may claim that we are a for-all nation or for-all commonwealth.

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