Bulwark Takes - Kaine: Trump’s Shutdown Is Pure Neglect

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Sam Stein takes on Tuesday's stunning election results with Senator Tim Kaine, why the Virginia Senator believes putting the economy front and center is key to Democratic victories, and how Trump’s chaos still looms over everything from shutdown talks to foreign policy.

Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bork, and I am pleased to be joined by Senator Tim Cain of the Great Commonwealth of Virginia. I got that right, see. You didn't, Sam. Very good, man. I have a few things I can still get right. We are talking in the morning after a fairly smashing and resounding victory for Virginia Democrats and, frankly, for Democrats across the country. The party captured, recaptured, all the statewide offices made huge gains in the State Assembly. And, yeah, I, I want to start off with a difficult question, but it's very hard to find one for you. So I'm going to go with this one.

What's your hot take on the elections from last night? And it has to be unique. Don't make it a bland take, okay? Yeah, no, I'm going to, I mean, I'll tell you the truth. Abigail was very, very disciplined. And she made her campaign about the economy. There were three pillars. It was affordability and jobs and education, but education is really key to the workforce.

not just kids, but to the workforce, and she's stuck in that lane no matter what they tried to throw at or no matter what the other side was going after. She never got out of that. And that has been my critique, Sam, of Democrats for a long time, is that the economy is always the issue that matters the most to the most people. But when you do a generic polling of the American public, well, who's better for the economy, Republicans or Democrats? Usually they say Republicans, even though I think the evidence is actually better for Democrats, but Democrats just talk about other stuff. We just can't resist chasing this or that rabbit and talking about other stuff,

and we don't make the economy front and center. And I think campaigns like Abigail's, and look very different than the New York mayor, but they ran on affordability. So I think they're showing us a path, which is put the economy front and center. Many other issues are really important. Talk about them too, but put the economy front and center.

It's funny you mentioned that. I wasn't planning to bring this up, But it does sort of remind me of you and Hillary Clinton, frankly, in 2016, where you're running down the stretch and, you know, Trump presents this unique kind of existential threat and you feel the need to grab onto that and campaign on it. And that tripped you up in 2016. Is that something, is that a fair assessment? I think it's fair.

Look, I would get talking points from the campaign every day about what they wanted me to say. And it was always attacks on Trump rather than celebrating either. democratic accomplishments or Hillary's own virtues and accomplishments. And I would always have to add that in and have lived that in because that was not what the campaign was hoping to focus on. Yeah. It's amazing that we're like 10 years down the road and Democrats are still having these discussions internally about how to focus. But it does seem like across the board, even Zarmam Dani, it was really cost of living economics. And that was the main focus. Yep. And look, it is an implied criticism of Trump because,

Obviously, the guy ran on it, you know, I'm going to help the price of eggs go down. The price of everything's gone up. Tariffs reckon folks deportation and the immigration policies are screwing up the workforce in the ag and other sectors. And so we have an economy that was the strongest in the world when Donald Trump took it over that now has smoke and red lights flashing and, you know, all kinds of challenges because he's taking the wrecking ball to it. And Democrats can make an economic argument that sticks.

with people because they don't like the way Donald Trump's running things. When you look at the results from last night, and I know Republicans are spending it by saying, well, these are blue states. And I mean, look, maybe so. Jersey and Virginia are not the most blue estate. But there were real results in Georgia and Mississippi as well, not blue states. Yep. Do you look at that and say, hey, my party has a legitimate chance actually to win back control of

the United States Senate? I do. I do. You know, six months ago, I would have said it would have been. drawing to an inside straight to do that. There was a chance, but it would have been very hard. I think the directional arrow has been stronger and stronger and stronger. And I think last night shows that. And I am Virginia-centric, so I will say, I don't think the New York City electorate or even the New Jersey electorate is like the precise match for the American electorate. But here in

Virginia, we do have a Republican governor right now. We will elect Republicans. I think that Virginia's electorate is, you know, kind of similar to North Carolina and Georgia, maybe a little bit similar to Ohio and Pennsylvania, some of the states we have to win to win the Senate. We have to win electoral votes there. If we're going to win the presidency in 28, I think Virginia is a pretty good barometer for how to do that. We believe we're the best turnaround project in the United States from red to blue in the last 25 years. And we've done it by winning the economic argument. And then when we get the chance, we govern competently, even if boringly, you know, competent, good management,

give people bang for their buck, you know. And, you know, folks like that. Competence usually isn't a big campaign issue unless people perceive there's vast incompetence, in which case they suddenly like competence. Look, no one's going to say Terry McAuliffe was boring, but Mark Warner will give you. Warner and me are more boring than Terry. Yeah, so the election was big also for the House. I know there were no House races, but Virginia Democrats,

are now in the position to go full throttle, it appears, with this redistricting effort that they're going to do. I assume you believe this will happen. Sam, it's going to happen unless the red states sort of back off, but that may be already horses out of the Barton because the Dems positioned this, I think even in the legislation that they passed, you know, so long as X number of states are, you know, being lemmings and following President Trump, and doing a mid-decential redistricting for political purposes we're doing this. So I think they've maintained an off-ramp to not do it if Republican states choose to stop or go backwards.

But I think that die probably is cast. Donald Trump is forcing Republican states to do it. Some states like Kansas are choosing not to, but Texas has. Indiana is looking at it. Other states have. So I think this will happen in Virginia. I only have about five more minutes. I've got three topics, so I'm going to hopefully get them all in.

You're in the middle of a government shutdown, longest shutdown in history. There have been rumblings that a deal was imminent, or at least close to imminent, and now we have this election. How does this election affect the shutdown negotiations, if at all? Here would be a way it could affect the negotiation. The problem with the negotiation thus far has been the missing party, Donald Trump. It's like waiting for Godot. You know, we avoid shutdowns or get out of them when the president engages. The president thus far

has chosen not to engage. He even says that negotiation, you know, which is what you always do, he says, I won't be extorted. I don't know why sitting down with congressional leadership reminds him of extortion. Maybe in his life extortion has been a more common, you know, theme than in most people. But he thinks, you know, negotiation is beneath him. This is what presidents do. We would be out of this in a few hours if he would engage. We wouldn't even have been, into it if he would have engaged. And so I think if the elections last night have any effect on this, it's going to be maybe convincing him that sitting on the sidelines and just waiting for a solution isn't going to happen. If it will make him engage, then we will find a

quick path forward. There are bipartisan discussions. It doesn't appear that's the way he's going. He renewed his call to get rid of the filibuster this morning, although majority leader Thune says the votes aren't there. Look, you've been in favor of filibuster reform. You've been, yes. You probably don't remember this, but the first time you and I talked was 2016 close of the campaign where you embraced eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Are you quietly comfortable with the idea of them getting rid of the filibuster for this? You know, you got, if you're for filibuster reform, you have to try it on for size and think in the majority and think of the minority in the reform that Senator Merkla and I put on the table,

and we had a vote on in the Senate in 2021, I believe, or 2022, I would still embrace. And it's basically returning the filibuster to what it had been during virtually the entire life of the United States Senate. It's not eliminating it, but it's putting it back to how it used to be used, sort of the talking filibuster model. Talking filibuster, yeah. The other question I had was there's a kind of mini crisis, not really many, but a real crisis happening in the Eastern District of Virginia. Yes, yes. The installment of Lindsay Halligan there as the U.S. attorney and now the prosecutions of James

Comey, which apparently are not going well in court. That's for another conversation. I am curious, have you had any conversations with Lindsay Halligan since she's been installed? No, no. And she, you know, she's going to need to come through the Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing and vote. But thus far, she has not reached out to our office or Senator Warner's office for a discussion. If she does, I'm going to be glad to sit down with her.

You know, we had a really good process. We recommended people to the White House that the White House liked so much they put him in a position. Todd Gilbert in the Western District, Eric Siebert in the Eastern District. But then neither of those guys would compromise on their integrity and push political persecutions. And so they both lost their jobs as a result. If Ms. Halligan wants to reach out, I know Senator Warner and I would be glad to talk to her. My last question for you is what's happening in Venezuela. I mean, there's been a campaign in the Caribbean and now in the Eastern Pacific.

You have pushed for a war power resolution. This is your hobby horse, I would say. You have as a partner in this, you have Rand Paul, who's been saying, one Republican saying this is both illegal and unethical. And yet there's no indication that the administration is going to abide by any congressional restraint. In fact, it looks like they're ramping up efforts to unseat Maduro. What are your fears here? And are there constraints that Congress can apply realistically to what Donald Trump's doing? Yes.

We will likely have a vote tomorrow, Sam, on my resolution. No war in Venezuela without a vote of Congress. And we got two when Adam Schiff and I did, you know, no strikes in the current. Caribbean without a vote of Congress. We've got two Republicans, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski. The White House at least claims a legal rationale for the strikes in international waters. I've read that rationale. It says nothing about allowing strikes in a sovereign nation. So I'm hoping that more Republicans might join me tomorrow. But look, you're right. This was my obsession when I came into the Senate. I came in the middle of two wars, you know, or with Afghanistan

still going on, but the lessons of Iraq fresh in mind. and we were back on a rock to fight ISIS. We should not be going to war without a vote of Congress, and Congress should craft the authorizations carefully and debate them in front of the American public and have a vote. Too often, members of Congress are afraid to sign on the dotted line. They want the president to just initiate war. If it goes well, we were with you.

If it goes bad, how come you did it? Members of Congress need to have the guts to cast a vote about war, and that's what I'm going to try to force tomorrow with respect to Venezuela. All right. We fit a lot in there for 12. minutes. Senator Kane, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Take care. You've wrangled, you've wrangled filibustering senators before into giving short answers, so I'm glad we could do that. I try my best, man. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you. Thank you guys

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