Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine cited the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Tuesday to illustrate how Hillary Clinton is better qualified than Donald Trump to be the next president.

The Virginia senator's remarks came as he trashed Trump for his critical and suggestive remarks about a Gold Star family of Muslim faith.

"[Trump] started going after them. Going after a Gold Star family," Kaine told a crowd of supporters in North Carolina. "That's not the kind of person we need in office."

Khizr Khan, an American Muslim whose son, Army Captain Humayun Khan, died in 2004 while serving in Iraq, rebuked the GOP nominee's immigration platform during a speech last month at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

With his wife by his side, Khan challenged Trump to read the U.S. Constitution.

The Republican presidential candidate and his supporters have responded to the speech with a series of attacks, including demands that the Gold Star family apologize and suggestions that Khizr Khan may have ties to Islamic jihad.

On Tuesday, Kaine drew a comparison between how Trump has responded to Khan and how Clinton has responded to criticism from the families of Americans who died in the Benghazi attacks.

Patricia Smith, whose son, Sean, died in the 2012 attacks, said at the Republican convention in Cleveland last month that Clinton "should be in stripes" for her handling of the terrorist event.

"The Khan family, they did stand up and challenge Donald Trump. They challenge him. The week before in Cleveland, they paraded one person after the next up to challenge Hillary Clinton," Kaine said.

"Families who were grieving because they lost people in the raid on Benghazi. They put them on stage and they let them trash Hillary Clinton," he added. "Did Hillary Clinton turn her attention from the campaign trail to direct her anger and her fire at grieving family members who have every right to grieve? Of course not. That's not what a president does. It's not what a president does. And Donald Trump is not ready to be president."

Kaine has said before that he is distressed by Trump's public fight with the Khans.

"It is deeply, deeply upsetting," Kaine said earlier this month in an interview with WXII-TV in North Carolina.

"When somebody who wants to be commander in chief will go after and kind of ridicule or trash parents who lost a child, who served valiantly and saved others' lives — I mean, it's like, is nothing sacred?" he asked. "In Virginia, this really spins people's heads around — very, very upsetting to us."