Sen. Tim Kaine’s Midterms Analysis

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Senator, you mentioned Georgia. We understand it’s going to run off, December 6th. But I want to ask what everybody also chatters about. The whole, sort of, watercooler debate is what does this mean for Donald Trump? Does he come back? Has MAGA been diminished? What does it mean for the next two years of this term?

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): Well, I think last night’s results were very, very humbling. Very humbling. I’m not sure you can humble Donald Trump. But for the Trump operation, they were nearly disastrous. Now, the president has said that he is going to make a big exciting announcement next week at Mar-a-Lago. After last night, they maybe should move it to four seasons landscaping because I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near as exciting as it would’ve been if he had a good night. But I do think he had a bad night last night on the Republican side. I think most people are saying. I think it’s true that Governor DeSantis had a good night. I think you’re seeing setup a very, very stiff internal party battle on the other side about who their leader will be going into 2024.

AMANPOUR: And, you know, you obviously ran with Hillary Clinton as her running mate against Trump back in 2016, so, you know. What does it mean for the Democrats if Ron DeSantis does emerge as the, sort of, anointed one for the next round? Because he’s very Trumpian. But he’s — he’s got a — well, some Democrats say he’s a lot smarter. I don’t quite know how else to put it.

KAINE: Yes. Look, Christiane, and I think that you used some interesting words and verbs in your question, emerge as the anointed one. I am not sure that there’s going to be an anointment. And I’m not sure that it’s going to be, kind of a natural emergence. I suspect that you’re going to see an extremely vigorous contest on the Republican side. I mean, imagine this, President Trump was using some of his rallies in the closing week. Instead of going after Democrats, he would spend time talking about Ron DeSantis or other Republicans that he didn’t like. And saying, I know some things about him that I’ll tell everybody if they ran for president, or if Mike Pence runs, it would be horribly disloyal. So, I don’t see a path for anyone on the Republican side. And this would probably be the case on any side in any presidential election now. I don’t see a path where there’s sort of an anointment and a coronation. I think this is going to be a very, very tough two years as the Republican Party grapples with the reality that President Trump still has a huge portion of the party just lock solid in his camp. There are many that are rethinking that and looking for other alternatives. This is not going to get resolved anytime soon.