Gov. Tim Walz (D., Minn.) talked a big game in the buildup to Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, saying he couldn’t wait to square off against Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), whom he characterized as “weird as hell.” But when debate night rolled around, Walz found himself routinely agreeing with Vance’s policy proposals and touting the pair’s “commonality.”
Walz, for example, nodded along during Vance’s remarks on child care, responding, “I don’t think Senator Vance and I are that far apart.” At another point, he endorsed Vance’s critique of America’s asylum processing system. “I agree it should not take seven years for an asylum claim to be done,” he said.
Even Vance’s answer on abortion—the issue at the center of the Harris campaign’s attacks on Vance—earned an endorsement from Walz. “I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what’s happening,” Walz said. He concluded the affair by saying he “enjoyed tonight’s debate” and thought “there was a lot of commonality.”
It was a far cry from Walz’s portrayal of Vance when the Democrat campaigned for and eventually landed the vice presidential nomination. Walz earned rave media reviews for his near-constant labeling of Vance and former president Donald Trump as “creepy” and “weird as hell,” rhetoric that helped catapult Walz to the top of the VP shortlist.
“I gotta tell ya, I can’t wait to debate the guy,” Walz said in August after being unveiled as Kamala Harris’s running mate. “These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell.” “It’s a masterclass of Midwestern prosody that cannot be taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop,” Slate wrote of Walz’s speech. “J.D. Vance should be afraid—because this guy used to teach high school.”
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