VA - Stewart fires up Republican base at local fundraiser
By JOSH JANNEY The Winchester Star
13 hrs ago
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U.S. Senate hopeful Corey Stewart told a crowd of about 70 people at a Winchester-Frederick-Clarke Republican Women’s Club event that if he is elected, he will support the actions of President Donald Trump.
Josh Janney/The Winchester Star
STEPHENS CITY — Loyalty to President Donald Trump and deporting immigrants who have entered the country illegally are top priorities for Republican candidate Corey Stewart, who is seeking to unseat U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in the November election.
The 50-year-old Stewart, who is chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, addressed fellow Republicans on Saturday night at Valerie Hill Winery in Frederick County, where the Winchester-Frederick-Clarke Republican Women's Club hosted its annual Boots & Barbecue fundraiser. Proceeds will benefit Bluemont-based Boulder Crest Retreat for wounded warriors.
Dels. Chris Collins, R-Frederick County, and Dave LaRock, R-Hamilton, were among those in attendance.
A recent Roanoke College poll shows that Kaine has a 17-point lead over Stewart, but Stewart said the polls covering the Nov.6 election are “quite frankly, garbage.”
"All of the polls had Trump way down, right up until election date,” Stewart said. “Now, the same polls have me down against Tim Kaine."
Stewart told the crowd of about 70 that Kaine has accomplished "nothing" during his first six-year term in the U.S. Senate.
"In fact, Tim Kaine is worse than nothing,” Stewart said. “We'd be better off without a senator in the United States Senate from Virginia than having Tim Kaine, because what he has been doing is undermining the president of the United States."
He described Kaine as an automatic "no" vote to everything that Trump does, and he criticized Democratic opposition to Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
If elected, Stewart said he would support Trump, individual tax cuts, repealing the Affordable Care Act and building a wall along the Mexican border. He proudly declared that he put into place in Prince William County “the nation’s toughest crackdown on illegal immigration.”
Stewart talked about the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, a University of Iowa student who disappeared on July 18 while jogging in Iowa. She was found dead on Aug. 21. Cristhian Bahena Rivera, an unauthorized immigrant from Mexico, has been charged with first-degree murder in her death.
“Any crime is a tragedy. Any murder is a horrible tragedy,” Stewart said. “But what makes the murder of Mollie Tibbetts so especially tragic is the fact that it was 100 percent preventable, because this animal that murdered her was here illegally. And if we had built the border wall, if we had been enforcing the nation's immigration laws internally, she would still be alive today. Unfortunately, she's not going to be the last victim. And what she is the victim of is politicians, mostly on the Democratic side, who are refusing to do their job to protect you and your family.”
Some members of the Tibbetts family have asked for her death not to be politicized.
Stewart said he wants the immigration status of every person arrested to be checked. Prince William County currently does this.
“And if you are here illegally, you are not going to be released back in the community where you can commit more crimes against Virginians and other American citizens,” Stewart said. “We are going to send you back to your home country so you never victimize another American ever again."
The crowd applauded enthusiastically after that statement.
Stewart later clarified that he believes criminals who have entered the country illegally should be prosecuted in America, go to jail and serve their sentence before they are deported.
"We don't have a border wall,” Stewart said. “So even when you deport somebody, you send them back to wherever they are from and they just keep coming back because we don't have border security.”
Stewart told The Star he opposes gun control and believes it is ineffective in stopping mass shootings. Instead, he said schools need more school resource officers to protect students. He also said teachers who are willing should be allowed to conceal carry inside schools, if they are trained and tested.
He does not want to find a way to give DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients a pathway to citizenship.
“I think we need to enforce the law,” Stewart said. “If you don't enforce the law, you have chaos, which is what we have in our immigration system. And if somebody breaks the law and they are consequently separated from their families, that is their fault, not the government's."
He said funding the construction of a border wall is a minor issue, claiming “$20 billion in the context of a $3 trillion budget is pennies. I would fund it through the defense budget.”
If Kaine is re-elected, Stewart fears he will vote to impeach the president.
Last Tuesday, Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted on eight felonies related to various financial frauds. And Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to to eight felonies, including two crimes involving election-fraud payoffs.
"But the Democrats, if they control the House and Senate, they will impeach the president,” Stewart said. “I don't see it as an impeachable offense. I haven't seen anything that looks like an impeachable offense to me. But the Democrats will certainly mire President Trump in impeachment proceedings for the next two years."
If Trump is impeached, Stewart said the Affordable Care Act won't be repealed and the border wall won't be built.
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