Kaine links Trump refugee ban, Holocaust statement

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) says there is a direct tie between President Trump’s temporary ban on visitors from seven Muslim-majority nations and his handling of a statement recognizing Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“The fact that that was done last Friday on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the same time the White House was taking out of the annual proclamation any reference to the fact that the Holocaust was about Jews, this was not a coincidence,” he said Monday at Virginia’s Washington Dulles International Airport.

{mosads}“This is not an accident,” added Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee. “These things are connected and we have to stand strong for First Amendment values.”

Kaine praised the people who have protested Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees at major airports like Dulles.

“This has been a most disturbing weekend but I want to thank everybody here who has shown the true face of who Virginia is and who this country is by welcoming people to Dulles in the commonwealth of Virginia,” he said.

“We are a welcoming state, not a hard-hearted state. We are an open state, not a state with a closed fist. The folks who are here are demonstrating that.”

Kaine on Sunday sajd there was “irony” in Trump imposing a “religious test” for refugees the same day the White House issued a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention Jews.

“So you put a religious test on Muslims and you try to scrub reference to Jews in the Holocaust Remembrance,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This was horribly, horribly mishandled.”

Trump last Friday signed an executive order imposing a 90-day ban on visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The president’s measure cited those nations as “countries of particular concern” for terrorism as designated by the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump’s order also instituted a 120-day pause on general refugee admissions, making a Syrian version indefinite on account of Syria’s civil war. 

The president has staunchly defended the order, saying the media is falsely reporting it as a Muslim ban. The White House said the measures are necessary to protect national security and have been a great success.

Democrats and human rights groups have blasted the act as unconstitutional and say it unfairly targets Muslims.