CBS "Face the Nation" interviews during 2018: on Civil Rights

Corey Stewart: Protect Confederate monuments

KAINE: Yes, it is. But look who won last year. It wasn`t the people who want to secede or go backwards who are winning elections.

Q: When you mayor of Richmond, you dealt with some of these questions about how to represent the Confederacy. The rallying point last year for the Unite the Right rally was the question of the removal of Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville.

KAINE: Charlottesville was not about statues. It was about hatred. It was about bigotry and division. This was not a save the statue rally. It was a Unite the Right rally. Statues don`t make you march around chanting, "Jews will not replace us." They don`t make you say "blood and soil" or other slogans from Nazi youth rallies. To say Charlottesville was about statues diminishes the gravity of it.

Tim Kaine: Redefine VA as rainbow coalition instead of Unite the Right

KAINE: Yes.

Q: But it feels, on many of these issues, that it`s very much an open wound. What has actually changed since Charlottesville's [racist attack]?

KAINE: Charlottesville was shocking. At that Unite the Right rally, most of the people arrested for violence that day were out-of-staters who came in to bring their hatred and bigotry. What I see that has changed in Virginia is people saying, "we`re not going to let our state be defined this way." It was seen most directly in the Virginia elections in November of 2017: Of the 15 people that got elected, 11 of the 15 were women, African-American, LGBT--It was a real rainbow coalition.

Q: Yet Corey Stewart, the man running against you, wants to protect Confederate monuments. That`s countering what you`re describing.

KAINE: Yes, it is. But look who won last year. It wasn`t the people who want to secede or go backwards who are winning elections.