(Headline USA) Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, may have hoped to give Vice President Kamala Harris one of her first official interviews since becoming Democrats’ presidential nominee after the two rival campaigns had a chance encouter Wednesday on a Wisconsin tarmac.
Other than scoping out Air Force Two—the plane he hopes soon to make his—Vance’s only question was why Harris has been hiding from the media.
“I thought the reporters traveling with Kamala might be a little lonely given that she never answers questions from them, so I figured I’d come say hello and check out my new plane while I was at it,” Vance later wrote on X.
But alas, the elusive Biden border czar managed to give him the slip, snapping photos with a group of Girl Scouts at Chippewa Valley Regional Airport before speeding away in her motorcade.
In their first official day on the campaign trail together, Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, planned to speak after a concert by indie-rockers Bon Iver, with the Grammy-winning band drawing a huge crowd for its much anticipated homestand.
Kamala Harris supporters gather by the thousands in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and chant:
"This is what democracy looks like!"
Who wants to tell them? 🤣pic.twitter.com/LIghjzxz69
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 7, 2024
During his stop in Eau Clare on Wednesday, Vance recounted his near meeting and ridiculed Democrats’ lack of self-awareness in their campaign to smear him as “weird.”
“If those people want to call me weird I call it a badge of honor,” Vance said.
Walz, who is credited with first coining the smear attack, also pushed a ridiculous falsehood in his Tuesday night acceptance speech, claiming that Vance’s award-winning memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, includes a passage in which he performs a sex act on a couch.
The bizarre claim, however, was invented purely from the depraved minds of Democrats themselves, as no such passage exists in the book.
Like all regular people in America's heartland, JD Vance studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and wrote a bestseller trashing that community.
Come on.
I can't wait to debate the guy—that is, if he's willing to get off the couch and show up. pic.twitter.com/4orv0v2xTZ
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 6, 2024
At an earlier stop in Michigan, Vance slammed Harris the current administration’s open-border policy, noting that it had lead to a rise in violent crime.
“We’ve got to throw Kamala Harris out of office, not give her a promotion,” Vance said, arguing that the former prosecutor was not on the side of police.
Harris has donated to nonprofits that openly support the “Defund the Police” movement, as well as advocating for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a collection to bail out rioters and other violent criminals during the 2020 Black Lives Matter race riots.
Republicans largely celebrated Harris’s choice of Walz, whose socialist views, like her own, make the Democratic ticket perhaps the most extreme in U.S. history.
But with Harris appearing to overtake GOP nominee Donald Trump in recent polls, they also sought to make voters aware of the serious stakes in selecting a president who could make the disasterous Biden administration pale in comparison.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., noted during a conference call that Walz was “part of the radical, crazy left as is Vice President Harris.”
The Harris campaign said Wednesday that it had raised $36 million in the first 24 hours after the vice presidential announcement.
The momentum could be pivotal in Detroit, which is nearly 80% black. leaders for months had warned administration officials that voter apathy could cost them in a city that’s typically a stronghold for their party.
The Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the NAACP Detroit branch, said the excitement in the city now is “mind-blowing.” He likened it to Barack Obama’s first run for president in 2008, when voters waited in long lines to help elect the nation’s first Black president.
Walz’s addition to the ticket has likewise soothed some tensions within the Muslim community, signaling to some community leaders that Harris was willing to pander to their anti-Semitic views by snubbing Jewish Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was assumed to be the frontrunner in the veepstakes.
“The party is recognizing that there’s a coalition they have to rebuild,” said Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan. “Picking Walz is another sign of good faith.”
He downplayed the Jew hatred that has been on the rise since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre last year that left some 1,200 innocent Israelis dead following a horrific ambush attack.
“It’s certainly not anti-Semitic to critique somebody’s position on Israeli policy,” Hammoud claimed. “That’s just called stewardship and accountability.”
Pushback from Arab Americans and union leaders was “not the only reason why [Harris] did not pick Shapiro, but it is one of the major reasons,” said Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News and a prominent leader in Michigan’s large Muslim community.
“Not picking Shapiro is a very good step,” Siblani added. “It cracks the door open a little more for us.”
Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is Jewish, was excited by the prospect of having Shapiro as a vice presidential candidate but was “disturbed” by the criticism he received, believing that many of the vetted candidates had similar views on Israel.
He insisted, however, that the criticism played no role in Harris’s decision and that “she’s choosing somebody based on this long game of who she can work with for four to eight years.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
