Amateur hour

Kaine mocks Trump's 'diplomatic amateur hour'

By Nick Gass

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine pilloried Donald Trump on Thursday for the Republican nominee's meeting with the president of Mexico and subsequent tough talk on immigration hours later in Arizona, while poking fun at the conflicting accounts over whether the wall came up during the sit-down.

"Well, I think this is kind of a diplomatic amateur hour by Donald Trump," the Virginia senator told NBC's Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie on "Today," the first leg of a morning-show blitz.

Kaine pondered the odds that Trump would have avoided saying anything about the wall and Mexico paying for it during the meeting after making it a central point of his campaign for more than a year.

"I find that kind of ridiculous," Kaine said. "Even if it didn't come up, he choked and forgot to say that to the president of Mexico after he's been saying it every day for the last many months?"

Trump's statement that he did not bring up the wall during the meeting, Kaine added, "shows that he sort of folded under pressure and didn't have the backbone to say to the Mexican president what he's been saying over and over."

Kaine showed no concern when Lauer noted that Trump appeared more reserved and even presidential by appearing alongside Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

"You know, I think the important thing about leadership is you got to be consistent. You can't say different things to different audiences," Kaine said. "And so, you know, he came back across the border and then it was all about Mexico is going to build a wall. Mexico is going to pay for it. He was divisive. He basically says America is going to be deportation nation. But when he's looking the leader of Mexico in the eye, he can't bring himself to say it."

The fact that he did not do so, Kaine explained, "tells me something about his backbone" and demonstrates "kind of a diplomatic lack of resolve." Coupled with his "language of division" and vow to deport any people in the United States illegally, "that shows that Donald Trump's not changing anything," he said.

As far as whether Trump prevailed in the war for optics by traveling to Mexico while Clinton spent the greater part of the last week fundraising in the Hamptons, Kaine disagreed with that premise.

"I don't think so. Again, just do the contrast, the 24 hours of yesterday," Kaine said. "Donald Trump choked on the fundamental promise that he's making in this campaign when he had the opportunity to talk to the foreign leader about it by his words he didn't bring it up, by the leader's words, yeah, no did come up and I told Trump we're not paying for your wall. So that just shows that I think kind of not ready for prime-time but then back over on this side of the border, he just doubles down on this divisive deportation nation strategy."