President Donald Trump lashed out at Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) on Monday over comments the senator made rejecting the notion that Americans’ rights don’t come from laws — but instead from God alone.
“He should be ashamed of himself!” Trump declared, speaking before his own Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
Last week on Wednesday, senior Trump official Riley Barnes, quoting a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, declared that Americans’ rights “come from God our creator,” and “not from our laws” or “governments,” while speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Fox News reported.
Kaine, a Catholic, rejected Barnes’ comments, comparing the notion that Americans’ rights come from God and God alone to how the Iranian government operates, calling it “extremely troubling.”
Trump clearly caught wind of the senator’s comments, and condemned them as “terrible” during his remarks Monday.
“Under the Trump administration, we're defending our rights and restoring our identity as a nation under God, we are one nation under God and we always will be,” Trump said.
“The need for this commission has never been more clear than it was last week when the ineffectual senator from Virginia, a man named Tim Kaine, stated that the notion 'our rights come from our creator' is 'extremely troubling' to him. Isn't that terrible, how he would say something like that?”
Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission via executive order on May 1, with its directive being to advice the White House’s Faith Office on religious liberty policies in the United States, including on how to best protect domestic religious liberty and to identify opportunities to “further the cause” of religious liberty abroad.
“The senator from Virginia should be ashamed of himself, for many things!” Trump said. “For many things, for things even beyond that, but in its own way, nothing is more important than those words, they were terrible words. We have to bring back religion in America, bring it back stronger than ever before.”
