Evening Edition: Republicans Look To Flip Virginia Senate Seat
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I'm Greg Jarrett. I'm Sandra Smith. I'm Charles Payne and this is the Fox News Rundown. Thursday, October 24th, 2024. I'm Eben Brown. Is Virginia a battleground for the U.S. Senate? An immigrant and veteran is the Republican nominee challenging a tenured Democratic incumbent who almost became vice president.

and he's making lots of fans out of people. Northern Virginia has a lot of immigrants, and they see the same thing I'm seeing, which is that the left is turning this country into what I ran away from. This is the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. ♪

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You might not have been keeping an eye on the U.S. Senate race in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Incumbent Democrat Tim Kaine is seeking re-election, but is under a challenge by a man who served in the U.S. Navy as an immigrant, who lived around the world and was born in Vietnam. Someone who is making border security and immigration issues a key point of his senatorial bid.

You might have first heard Hong Kao speak at this summer's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Only in America, ladies and gentlemen, only in America. But we're losing our country. Under Joe Biden, millions of illegal aliens flood our borders. They fly Hamas flags on our campuses and they shout death to America. As an immigrant to this great country, let me be very clear to everyone who comes here.

Don't ask for the American dream if you're not willing to obey the American laws and embrace the American culture. There are now less than two weeks to go before Election Day. Early voting began last month in Virginia. Of course, polling and fundraising continues. And Cow says those are his clues. His campaign has a lot of life. We always knew that this is going to be one of those late breaking races. We have always known Virginia breaks very late.

And we're proving it right now. I mean, the person I'm running against is a 30-year career politician named Tim Kaine. So this guy was a lieutenant governor, a governor. But he was terrible at everything. I call him the second Tim from Minnesota, right? They're both from Minnesota. They're both horrible governors. And on November 5th, they'll both be failed vice president candidates because...

Tim Kaine has not done anything for Virginia, and no one remembers what he's done except for he got stuck on I-95 with a bottle of Dr. Pepper, and that's about it. So we've basically drafted them the whole time, and just like in NASCAR, you know, shake and bake, you shoot up at the last minute, and that's what we've been doing. The last quarter in fundraising alone, he said that it was his best quarter. Well, guess what? I raised the exact same amount of money he did.

So this is a 30-year career politician who's raising on par with what a brand new person to politics is doing. Now, he's got more money because he's had the last six years to compile all this money. However, the fact that we've raised on par with him on the third quarter is pretty significant. And the biggest thing is I don't want to care about

polls because I've got my own polls and it's a lot different from all the polls that are out there. But look at the early voting numbers, Evan. As of today, 1.2 million people have voted in Virginia. That's more than 25% of the electorate. And compared to 2020, there's 200,000 less Democrats who have voted early.

So that's about 5% of the electorate. So if you're talking about a person being about four points behind them, 5% gets us over the edge.

Let's talk a little bit more about that with regard to Virginia. You know, I think every so often there is a race out of Virginia that the country actually watches. I think the last one certainly was that that saw Governor Youngkin become governor. Is it a bellwether or is it something else? I think that, you know, it's always hard to qualify or classify Virginia. It is a bellwether right now. I think because we'll close our polls earlier than the West Coast,

they'll see Virginia flip and it's going to be a cascading effect across the country. And again, it's just us getting people out there to vote, especially in southwest Virginia. I mean, northern Virginia, everybody knows, is a hard place for any Republican to run. Now, when I ran in 22 in the Congress, the 10th Congressional District, which includes Loudoun County,

I moved that needle from an area where Joe Biden won by 19% and took it down to 6%. That's a 13% shift. So we're able to do that in North Virginia and the South comes out for us, especially Southwest Virginia, then we've already won this race. And that's why Tim Kaine's concentrating so much in Southwest Virginia.

Let's talk about the differences of the different parts of Virginia. North Virginia, Northwest Virginia, or excuse me, Northern Virginia, as you were talking about, is essentially the D.C. suburbs, right? I mean, that's a very different area than the part of the state that borders North Carolina.

Oh, absolutely. We're talking about Fairfax County. And not only that, there's the independent cities of Arlington, Alexandria. I mean, they do their own thing and they're very, very blue out there. Loudoun County used to be very red, but it's shifted very blue lately also. But again, I ran Loudoun County and I moved it. Loudoun County got a lot of attention over the past couple of years because of its school board. Has that factored and that had to do with a lot of the trans rights issues and the matters in the school?

with regard to that. Has that played into the Senate race at all? Is that a topic? Absolutely. Still a topic because right now they masked the fact that a kid that was coming to school with a gun in middle school, they kicked him out and they secretly brought him back in to Loudoun Valley High School, which is in Loudoun County, and the school board didn't tell anybody. And this kid's now all tatted up. He's a ninth grader with most likely ties to MS-13 gangs.

That is going to school with other kids and terrorizing other kids. And again, the school board refuses to adhere to what the parents want. And so this is still an issue in Loudoun County. Let's talk about your campaign for the next couple of weeks or week and a half here. You know, campaigns are won when you get voters out. So how are you doing that? Is there any how do you overcome deficits that you might be encountering?

Well, you mentioned that Governor Youngkin won Virginia in 2021. And so, you know, I'm going around the Commonwealth with him, barnstorming every single city, every district. So we're talking about the Southwest, the Richmond area, and then Hampton Roads, where I was stationed three times because I was in the Navy. Even though I came here as a refugee from Vietnam, I was able to serve there.

in Navy Special Operations for 25 years to pay back our country. So I fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and I spent three tours of duty and three of my kids were born in Hampton Roads. So we're winning in Hampton Roads. And believe it or not, we're winning, even though it's one point in the Richmond area,

and were crushed in Southwest Virginia. So now it's a matter of getting the vote out in Northern Virginia and telling the story of, you know, Northern Virginia has a lot of immigrants and they see the same thing I'm seeing, which is that the left is turning this country into what I ran away from.

Right. And they're turning this into a socialist, communist type country. And it scares the heck out of us. And for them to identify with me, to see themselves in me, see their kids in me, that's that's really important. And that's why we're going to move that Northern Virginia needle significantly.

Our guest is Hung Cao, veteran, author, immigrant, and Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Virginia, as his campaign makes its final pitch on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. Please like and subscribe. We'll have more straight ahead.

The story of your immigration is, I think, pretty significant in no small part because of from where you immigrated. You came from Vietnam, which this country, the United States, has a bit of a checkered past with. And this was not a war that went well for the United States, both militarily and socially. It caused massive upheaval, perhaps only rivaled by the social upheaval I think we might be going through right now.

How do people receive that story? You know, like I said, you're an immigrant, but you've worn this nation's uniform. You've fought for this nation. You've published a book. You're in uniform on the cover of that book. You know, how is that story received by people? Because it's hard for the, or at least in this country, there has always been a grace, if you will, for even if there was a political disagreement to still

lavish praise on the immigrant who made good, the immigrant who came here and put that uniform on. And so how has that story been received?

Most people, when they hear the story, that's exactly what drives them over to our side. And that's why these last few weeks you're asking what my strategy is, is to tell my story, how America saved my life. It gave me hope. It gave me opportunity. I was willing to pay back with 25 years of service. But watching what happened in Afghanistan, I mean, I was there in January 2021 and six months later when mothers were handing babies to Marines because of Joe Biden's failure.

You know, that's what caused me to retire and run for office because, you know, we're repeating the sins of the past. And that resonates with a lot of Americans, especially, you know, on August 26th, when we were doing the remembrance for the 11 Marines, one sailor and one soldier that were killed at Abbey Gate. I had trained that area for such an attack and to watch it unfold exactly the way we had imagined it would happen, it just breaks my heart. And so...

Americans just understand that and they feel it. And again, the immigrants, the new Americans, the people that came here from other countries feel it as well. You know, if America falls, I'm telling you right now, there's nowhere else to run to. I grew up in Africa. I spent my lifetime traveling in 40 different countries and fighting in a few of them. You know, if America falls, there's nowhere else for us to run to. And so that's why it's so important for us to fight for our country right now.

It's so often that congressional candidates, senatorial candidates, when they campaign, they're talking about national issues. They may, if it's a presidential year, they often, for lack of a better term, piggyback on their party's presidential candidate, at least from the issue perspective. But if we go back to our Constitution, the original purpose of the United States Senate was to represent the state at the government level in Washington. So...

So what are some Virginia issues that are really on your mind here that you would have to or you would want to really tackle as as an advocate for Virginia, which, you know, from an American historical perspective, it's one of our most storied. I was going to say state, but I usually that's where I get yelled at. It's a commonwealth.

I think that Virginia's issues are the same as everywhere else. And it's the biggest thing is the economy. We can't afford to put food on the table. We can't afford to put gas in our cars. And we can't afford to buy a home. And meanwhile, we're spending a billion dollars a day to house and feed illegal aliens. I mean...

Just a few weeks ago, Hurricane Helene hit and two Virginians died. And where was Tim Kaine? He was at a pig roast. He couldn't be bothered. He was at a pig roast with his buddy Mark Warner, the other senator for Virginia.

And we needed his help. We needed to kick out all those illegal aliens from the four-star hotels that we're housing them in, medevac Americans out, and put them in those hotels and take care of them and help them rebuild. With a billion dollars a day, do you think we could use that in North Carolina or Virginia? Absolutely. Or in Florida? Absolutely.

But no, we're wasting it all on illegal aliens. And as an immigrant to this country, I've always said, don't ask for the American dream if you're not willing to debate the American laws and embrace the American culture, because I did. I love this country so much. I mean, I wrote a blank check up to including my life to defend it for 25 years.

So, you know, we need to take care of Americans first. So what do you do the next 10 days here? Well, up to election day and knocking on doors still, or what, what does it look like for you? We are running from, uh, town to town, city to city. Uh, unfortunately right now, you know, just like anything else, uh, like a deployment, the moment I go on a deployment, the kids get sick. And so right now we're, we're trying to nurse a six year old who's, who's been up all night, uh, you know, vomiting and, and, and, uh, twin 13 year olds trying to recover from a, uh,

from a pneumonia and you know we have our older kids and a grandchild too so there's a lot of family things that we still need to do however i'm going to hit the campaign trail and we're going to go from city to city and town town and and tell our story and tell them that help is on the way and help is is in form of you know new americans that are willing to fight for this country

like myself and veterans like myself, Sam Brown, Tim Sheehy, Dave McCormick, all these warriors who've bled and fought for this country, including J.D. Vance, and are now willing to fight for us in the Congress and in the Senate and at the presidency. Hung Cao, you are a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia. We always have to remember to say Commonwealth. We want to give the deference there, right? You're also a veteran. Thank you so much for being with us. The name of your book is Call Me an American.

And we thank you for being with us on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. Thank you, Evan. And please go to hungforva.com if you want to know more about me.

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