A Twitter star may have been born with Hillary Clinton's introduction of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who went in minutes from being not well known nationally to becoming the subject of a rapidly growing hashtag:
#TimKaineSoNice.
Or, as one Twitter user deemed him, "the guy everyone wants to have a beer with."
Kaine, who describes himself as "one of only 20 people in history to serve as a mayor, a governor, and a United States senator, admitted while introducing himself that he knows "for a lot of you this might be the first time you're hearing me speak. And let me be honest, for many of you, this is the first time you've ever heard my name."
He told of how he grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, as the son of a welder and working with his brothers in their father's shop, "but that's what families do. We would go there early in the summer to try to get the work done before the weather got hot."
His parents, he said, are "happy and healthy" still at 81 years of age.
"My mom once told me, 'You have to decide whether you want to be right or you want to do right. If you want to be right, go ahead and be a pessimist. But if you want to do right, be an optimist.'"
And after his education in Jesuit schools and getting through the University of Missouri in just three years, he took off a year from school to volunteer with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras, where he taught teens carpentry and welding.and brought home a fluency in Spanish, which he displayed often in his speech Saturday.
Kaine is also the father of three adult children, including one who is a U.S. Marine, and describes marrying wife, Anne, 32 years ago in Virginia as the "best decision of my life."
He also worked after attending Harvard Law School as a civil rights attorney for 17 years, "battling banks, landlords" and more who had treated people unfairly.
These anecdotes, plus his spirited speech delivered with a wide smile on his face and while alternating phrases in fluent Spanish, served as a charm for many Twitter users, who set out to outdo each other with phrases about the outspoken senator's "niceness" and to remark on his bilingual abilities:
But not everyone found Kaine so nice, and said so through the hashtag in tweets referring to his legal troubles in Virginia, where he had faced controversy for accepting gifts while in office. He also faced ire for his moderate stance on abortion, and for running for office as Clinton's running mate, among other issues.
And before Kaine's speech, GOP nominee Donald Trump was already calling him a "job killer:"
Trump was no more impressed after watching the announcement:
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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