Vance began his journey at the Shelby Township Police Department in Michigan with his first major attack on Walz, accusing him of “stolen valor” as he described his 24-year career in the Army National Guard. He argued that Walz had intentionally “abandoned” his unit by retiring to run for Congress before it deployed to Iraq, and that he had exaggerated his military service by referring to weapons he had “carried in war” even though he had not been deployed in combat. (CNN reported that Walz officially retired in May 2005, two months after a campaign memo saying he had been informed his unit might be deployed, but two months before they received official orders. “It is unclear” when he filed his retirement papers, the article said. The Harris campaign told CNN that his remarks about guns were intended to highlight his experience with “weapons of war,” which the party wants to limit.)
“I think this will stay with him for a long time because veterans and I think non-veterans are really angry that he claimed to have done something he didn’t do,” he told Semafor.
Democrats celebrated Walz’s election in part as a progressive response to Vance and his famous Ohio biography. Walz has Nebraska roots, a successful career as a high school football coach, a love of hunting and Diet Mountain Dew, and was more than happy to weaponize all of that against the Republican vice presidential nominee, whom he has derided as “weird” and mocked as a “phony” backed by Silicon Valley billionaires.
Vance said he was not impressed with the idea that the Midwestern father role would play well in the areas that formed the base of the Trump coalition.
“I think that suggests that people are motivated by style rather than substance. And if you look at why most Rust Belt voters leaned toward Donald Trump, it was on issues like immigration, tariffs and protecting American manufacturing jobs. Walz is terrible on all of those issues,” Vance said. “The idea that you can advocate for policies that open America’s borders and move American manufacturing jobs overseas, but they’re going to vote for you because you’re wearing a T-shirt and, well, a trucker hat – I think that’s actually an insult to most voters.”
Walz is also seen as a rival to Vance on policy issues, especially when it comes to family and child issues. His most important law in Minnesota was providing free meals for students. He also passed expanded child tax credits and paid family leave. Some Democrats like to compare this vision to that of Vance, who spent a lot of time in his early days as Trump’s running mate clarifying comments about “childless cat ladies” in the other party that he believed were anti-family.
When asked about Walz’s legislative accomplishments, Vance did not dismiss them out of hand. He noted that he “certainly believes we don’t want kids to starve in school” and that Walz, like all politicians, “is not wrong on 100 percent of the issues.”
But he also argued that Walz’s overall record – his “comprehensive worldview” – had hurt the family. He pointed to legislation Walz signed that made Minnesota a sanctuary for transgender youth affected by laws restricting gender-affirming care in other states. He called those laws “really dark things” that undermine parental rights (the law allows courts to decide custody disputes in which parents disagree about how to treat a child). He generally accused Walz of damaging the state’s “safety and prosperity” through poor management.
“I don’t think he’s pro-family,” Vance told Semafor. “I’m sure he’s not wrong about everything.”
Vance stressed throughout his trip that the top of the ticket matters more. At his stop in Wisconsin, he told reporters he agreed with Trump, who claims most people will vote for the presidential candidate. When asked about Walz in our own interview, he argued that what matters more is what the election “says about Kamala Harris.”
“That’s ultimately who’s going to govern, and that’s ultimately who the American people are going to think of when they vote,” Vance said. “But I think fundamentally he comes from the far left of the Democratic Party.”
The presidential candidates may be the most important candidates, but since becoming the running mate, Vance has arguably become a bigger target for Democrats than Trump. The party has portrayed him as a conduit for right-wing interests that will dominate Trump’s agenda if he wins office, particularly on issues like abortion.
On Wednesday, Vance addressed a new Washington Post story about his long-standing texting relationship with Charles Johnson, a notorious internet troll whom the Republican Jewish Coalition had dubbed a “Holocaust denier” — a connection Democrats like to call “weird” and extreme. Vance told me he didn’t know Johnson was “enmeshed in all these right-wing radical universes” when he met him briefly at a business meeting years ago, and said he was “very skeptical of his bullshit” in their leaked text messages.
“I mean, it’s partly just because I talk to people and I don’t necessarily support their views by talking to them,” he said. He added: “He’s kind of crazy. He’s kind of pathetic and I just largely ignored him. Sometimes I fought back. If I thought he said something interesting, I asked questions, and that’s how it was.”
