Dem veep hopeful Tim Kaine isn’t helping Hillary Clinton with her trustworthiness deficit

Dem veep hopeful Tim Kaine isn’t helping Hillary Clinton with her trustworthiness deficit

It’s been about a year since a Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters found that the “first word” that comes to voters’ mind when they hear the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s name is liar, with dishonest coming up fast on the inside rail. In the time that has elapsed since, Hillary Clinton has done little to dispel the widespread belief that she cannot be trusted.

If anything, she has solidified the conviction among the electorate that she lies more often that not by adding new whoppers to her already voluminous store.

What Clinton needs if she is to alter her trustworthiness numbers is a reliable “second” who can run interference for her on the campaign trail. Somebody unlike Tim Kaine.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

When the question arose yesterday — on  “CBS This Morning,” no less — of when Clinton will finally hold a press conference, Kaine offered this defense:

She talks to the press everywhere she goes. I don’t see what the massive difference is between a press conference and talking to the press everywhere you go. She talks to the press a lot, and I’ve been with her when she’s talked to the press.

If the former Virginia governor can’t see any difference between casual brushes with the media and a hardcore Q & A, he is either hopelessly naïve or an equally bad liar. Whichever is the answer, he is not helping Hillary.

Nor was he helping when he appeared an hour or so later on CNN, where he called sanctuary cities “phantoms.” Here is a video clip in which he makes this assertion and is promptly challenged by host Chris Cuomo.

Kaine is having these problems, mind you, while sitting for interviews with the mainstream media, which are on his side. If this is the best he can do, maybe Team Hillary should consider a more capable replacement … like Joe Biden.

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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