When Gov. Tim Walz made his public introduction as his party’s vice presidential candidate this week, the Minnesota Democrat turned his attention to possibly sharing a stage with Sen. JD Vance.
“I can’t wait to debate the guy — that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up,” Walz said.
Putting aside the governor’s crude subtext, the comments helped spark renewed interest in a possible showdown: Donald Trump appears to be afraid of Vice President Kamala Harris, but will Vance agree to debate Walz?
The Ohio Republican fielded a question on this on Wednesday, but as a report in The New Republic noted, his answer wasn’t altogether helpful.
During Vance’s rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Wednesday, the Republican vice presidential nominee inexplicably invited Harris to debate next week. “So here’s my offer to Kamala Harris: If she’d like to do a debate with me on August 13, I’ll do it,” Vance said.
As part of the same answer, Vance, in apparent seriousness, said Harris doesn’t yet know whether she’ll be her party’s presidential nominee, adding, “[W]e don’t know who the vice presidential nominee is going to be, either.”
The Republican concluded that Democrats might yet “pull a bait and switch” and dump Walz from the ticket, which is why, Vance added, he’s “all game” to hold a vice presidential debate with Harris next week.
In other words, those hoping to watch a Walz/Vance debate should probably start lowering their expectations. As for the top of the parties’ respective tickets, the GOP presidential nominee shared some new rhetoric on the subject during his latest Fox News interview. The New York Times reported: “I don’t know how she debates. I heard she’s sort of a nasty person,” he said, repeating an insult that he has used against several women, including Hillary Clinton, the former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and the ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott. “But not a good debater. But we’ll see, because we’ll be debating her, I guess, in the pretty near future. It’s going to be announced fairly soon.”
Trump concluded, “Look, she doesn’t want to debate.” It’s not the first time the former president, who obviously doesn’t want to debate, has engaged in projection, and it probably won’t be the last.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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