Hillary Clinton's running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, escalated his attacks on Donald Trump on Friday, calling his comments bigoted and telling to a crowd at a historically black college in Florida that Trump's values are associated with Ku Klux Klan values.
"Yesterday, Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Reno, Nevada, calling out Donald Trump on a lot of things on this equality idea, calling him out on the fact that he has supporters like David Duke, connected with the Ku Klux Klan, who are going around and saying Donald Trump is their candidate because Donald Trump is pushing their values," said Kaine (D-Va.). "Ku Klux Klan values, David Duke values, Donald Trump values are not American values. They’re not our values."
Duke is a former Klan grand wizard, currently running for a Senate seat in Louisiana, who has urged his supporters to back Trump.
"And we’ve got to do all we can to fight to push back and win, to say that we’re still about heading toward that North Star that we set out so long ago," Kaine added.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that Kaine "sunk to new lows."
"Tim Kaine sunk to new lows with dirty and deplorable attacks which have no place in this campaign," Priebus said. "No matter how desperate he is to distract from his running mate Hillary Clinton's litany of corruption scandals, there is no excuse for these vile and baseless smears."
The Trump campaign's political director Stephen Miller also said in a statement that Kaine was part of a "Wall Street machine" and "rigged" system that hurt minority communities.
"These repulsive and repugnant lies perpetrated by a desperate Clinton-Kaine campaign are nothing more than flailing attacks from failed politicians unable to defend their abysmal records, and seeking to deny Americans the change they deserve," Miller said. "It’s the lies and cynicism of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine versus the hope and optimism of Donald J. Trump and Mike Pence.”
Trump has accused the Clinton campaign of playing racial politics and has countered its accusations by raising concerns about Clinton's comments in the 1990s calling urban gang members "super-predators." Clinton has said she regrets the remarks.
Those comments were a source of controversy in the Democratic primary, prompting several protesters to confront Clinton at rallies and in one case at a fundraiser event.
On Friday, in a message aimed at African American voters, the Clinton campaign also released a new television ad highlighting a lawsuit that accused Trump's business of discriminating against black housing applicants.
Kaine on Friday reminded the crowd at the predominantly African American school about Trump's promotion of the false idea that President Obama was not born in the United States.
"Donald Trump was a main guy behind the scurrilous, and I would say bigoted, notion that President Obama wasn’t even born in this country, and Donald Trump has continued to push that irresponsible falsehood ... all the way up to now, and that’s the difference in this election, and that’s the stakes," Kaine said.