Tonight’s VP debate, between GOP nominee J.D. Vance and Democratic nominee Tim Walz comes on the heels of a months-long media assault on Vance contrasted with a friendly sales-pitch of Walz.
The contrast couldn’t be more stark in how the two were greeted into the 2024 race.
Walz has been sold to the American public as a “moderate” “folksy” “football coach” with “rural roots.”
On the other hand, Vance has been depicted as a “weird” and “dangerous” anti-women candidate who “believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity.” The media even judo-flipped Vance’s criticism of Walz’s “stolen valor” story by actually questioning his service, instead.
The following are the most egregious examples of leftist journalists and celebrities eviscerating Vance while whipping up excitement for Walz since the two VP candidates were nominated:
TIM WALZ
Selling Leftist Walz as “Folksy” “Football Coach” “Moderate” with “Rural Roots”
Correspondent Selina Wang: “He [Tim Walz] really has that perfect backstory. He also has those rural roots….He’s the one….who labeled J.D. Vance and his Republican allies as ‘weird,’ which gained a lot of steam with the Harris campaign. He has this folksy, personal, informal vibe that has really appealed to a lot of Democrats….Rural backstory….former member of the NRA….He was a football coach.”...
Chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl: “His district is a district that Donald Trump carried quite handedly, a pretty conservative district. And as a member of Congress, he was viewed as a moderate Democrat.”
— Correspondent Selina Wang on ABC News Special Report, August 6. Walz’s lifetime ACU rating is 8.
Don’t Believe the Hype! Harris-Walz are the Jordan and Pippen of Politics?
“I’m Hallie Jackson, live at the home of the Chicago Bulls! And if Vice President Harris hopes to be the new political Michael Jordan for Democrats, tonight we’re gonna hear from the guy you could call her Scottie Pippen.”
— Correspondent Hallie Jackson on NBC News Now’s live coverage of the night three of the Democratic National Convention, August 21.
Tim Walz “Knocked It Out of the Park,” “Electric,” Like a “Friday Night Lights” Episode
Co-host Gayle King: “I have a friend of mine, a grown ass man who said to me, I haven’t put on my jersey in years, but this guy made me want to put on my football jersey and suit up and get out there and do something. I thought that was very funny. Talk about the importance of Tim Walz to this campaign, because he knocked it out of the park, according to the people in this room last night.”
Chief campaign and election correspondent Robert Costa: “Oh, it was electric in here for Democrats, and they believe that Tim Walz makes this about something bigger than politics. It’s almost like an episode of Friday Night Lights.”
— CBS Mornings, August 22.
Walz Is “Attack Dog” But Somehow Still “Joyful and Jolly”
“He [Tim Walz] can be an attack dog and do it with a smile on his face….When Walz took the stage, he said ‘We have a heck of a lot more energy than they did at their convention. And there’s one guy who’s going to be sad, sad, sad about it.’ So he has a way of attacking. But, doing it so, you know, coming across as joyful and jolly.”
— Correspondent Weijia Jiang on CBS News live coverage of night three of the Democratic National Convention, August 21.
This is the Sales Pitch? Walz Is “Normal As Can Be”
“Tim Walz is the opposite of weird. Like in a dictionary, if you had ‘weird’ and ‘ant-weird,’ you’d have Tim Walz’s picture there as a high school coach and its history teacher, and a guy that seems as normal as can be.”
— USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, August 6.
Did Walz’s PR Staff Write This Headline?
“Walzing on Sunshine: How Tim Walz’s Upbeat Demeanor Got Him on The Kamala Harris Ticket”
— Headline for August 11 USA Today article.
Condemning “Swift-Boating” of Walz
“Republicans are talking about swift-boating Walz because he left the National Guard back in 2005 rather than stay and deploy to Iraq….Republicans are going to find out, I think, that framing a gun-owning Midwest nice guy as a radical far-left commie ends up painting you into some really weird corners.”
— Host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s All In, August 6.
J.D. VANCE
CNN’s Keilar Questions J.D. Vance’s Military Service
“I also think that J.D. Vance, as a messenger on this, may be an imperfect messenger because we have, as you introduced him as a combat correspondent, which was what his title was. But when you dig a little deeper into that, he was a public affairs specialist, someone who did not see combat, which certainly the title ‘combat correspondent’ kind of gives you a different impression. So, he may be the imperfect messenger on that.”
— Host Brianna Keilar on CNN’s Inside Politics, August 8.
J.D. Vance Only Wants White People to Have More Children
“This is this natalism that comes from an authoritarian playbook right?...There need to be more white children....This is about great replacement theory racism, right? This is what this is. So don’t misunderstand it for him wanting more children. He wants a certain kind of — you know racist thing.”
— Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 30.
Alex Wagner Peers Into J.D. Vance’s Speech, Finds White Supremacy
“It reveals someone who believes that the history that the family should inherit, and indeed, the history that should be determinative in the story of the Vance family, is the history of the eastern Kentucky Vances, and not the Vances from San Diego, which is where his wife is from and from where her Indian parents are from….And I just think the construction of this notion reveals a lot about someone who fundamentally believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity, and it’s couched in a sort of halcyon re-visitation of his roots, but it is actually really revealing about what he thinks matters, and who America is, and that America is a place for people with a shared Western background.”
— MSNBC host Alex Wagner on night three of MSNBC’s live coverage of the Republican National Convention, July 17.
J.D. Vance a “More Dangerous Virus” Than Trump
“He’s [Donald Trump] an instinctive, impulsive, intuitive nationalist. J.D. Vance is an ideological nationalist. That’s a much more dangerous virus because he can….polish this stuff and make it seem palatable to people. He can sell this stuff to Silicon Valley. He can sell this stuff to other places….It locks the Republican Party on a pathway that I think is dangerous for the world….This pick is a horror on the world stage.”
— Contributor Van Jones on night one of the CNN’s live coverage of the Republican National Convention, July 15.
Vance’s “Cat Lady Comment” Continues to Be “Major Story” in Presidential Race
Host Jonathan Lemire: “JD Vance’s childless cat lady comment continues to be a major story line in the presidential race. And his cleanup attempts, well, they don’t seem to be working….We have children, we love our children, we wouldn’t do anything different in our lives. But to suggest that those childless Americans don’t have high-quality lives….continues to be, on a more serious note, deeply offensive to people….This one [story] is really staying, and particularly for someone like JD Vance, trying to really introduce himself nationally, this is not a good first impression.”...
MSNBC contributor Katty Kay: “People with kids don’t like it. People, of course, without kids don’t like it. And then there’s this weird policy proposal that people who have kids should get more votes in the United States….Of course, the Democrats are making hey out of it.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 31.
Joy Behar: If You Asked J.D. Vance for Directions, He’d Send You Into Traffic
“I went to an event with Tim Walz out in Long Island this summer. And he was the kind of guy….if you were lost, you would ask him for directions. Because he seems safe and he seems sane. J.D. Vance; you ask him for directions, he’d probably put you in traffic.”
— Co-host Joy Behar on ABC’s The View, September 3.
Variety Slams Ron Howard Movie for Creating “Monster” J.D. Vance
“Hillbilly Elegy wasn’t written for readers of [J.D.] Vance’s political persuasion. Rather, it served to explain to liberals why Trump would get elected that fall, inspiring waves of parachute journalism as reporters rushed to such communities to make sense of the strange turn national politics was taking.…It was that dimension of Vance’s narrative that clearly attracted director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer — both self-avowed liberals, who may have created a monster by legitimizing his origin story, much as The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett did by giving Trump a reality TV spotlight back in 2004.”
— Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge in a July 17 article.
“Deeply Weird” Vance “Can’t Connect” With “Ordinary Americans”
“[Trump] and Vance are lots of things: they’re misogynists, narcissists, men who cum dead silent, plausible Masked Singer contestants. But they are also deeply weird. And each day seems to bring new evidence of Vance failing to connect with ordinary Americans from being booed by firefighters, whom he referred to as ‘haters,’ to the viral clip of him utterly failing to make small talk in a donut shop.”
— Host John Oliver on HBO’s Last Week Tonight, September 9.
Colbert Knowingly Spreads Fake Couch Story for Laughs
“So, all of us, all of us, please, have a responsibility to stop the spread of vicious rumors like JD Vance had sex with a couch. Because it’s simply not true. Which is why we have to refuse to use the hashtag #CushionPushinJDVance. And that’s why I certainly won't ever perform the juvenile chant, ‘JD Vance is sittin’ on a couch. His pee-pee hit the zipper and ouch!’...The AP had removed their fact check, which can only mean one of two things. Either the original story does not meet the AP’s rigorous standards or JD Vance had sex with a couch.”
— Host Stephen Colbert on CBS’s The Late Show, July 25.
