In his interview with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel on Monday, Tim Walz talked about one of the most notorious moments from the recent vice presidential debate: when JD Vance refused to directly answer Walz’s question about whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance’s response has been featured prominently in Harris campaign ads in the week since.
“That should have been the lede, don’t you think?” Walz said, when Kimmel asked him about it. “Eighty-five minutes before.”
“It’s crazy,” Kimmel agreed, then referenced how Capitol rioters were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” on Jan. 6. “Although you have to remember, also, the last vice president who said he thought Trump lost the election wound up being chased out of the Capitol building.”
“A self-preservation mode,” Walz joked. He said Vance’s non-answer was “very surreal to sit there and listen to,” although he described himself as “an eternal optimist” who hoped the country could move on from election deniers running for office.
“This idea that we could have different ideas, but we have unity, love for democracy, have an election, and then shake hands, and admit that the person who won won,” Walz said. “I think some of those things, we all grew up with pretty commonly.”
Walz also criticized Vance’s debate answer on gun control, where the Trump vice presidential pick described school shootings as “a fact of life” and offered solutions that revolved around improving school security.
“Like the vice president, I simply refuse to accept [it],” Walz said. “Donald Trump tells us to get over it, JD Vance says, you know, ‘This is just a fact of life’ or whatever. You can pass commonsense things, not infringe on the Second Amendment, but our first responsibility is those kids.”
Walz also criticized Republicans for dismissing school shootings as a mental health problem. “[They] pivot to Iit’s a mental health issue,’ trying to demonize people who are trying to get mental health care—Oh, at the same time, they’re cutting the funding for mental health care.”
“We don’t have to live this way,” Walz concluded. “I brought up in [the debate], and [Vance] batted it down: Countries that have just as much gun ownership as us but commonsense things in place, their children don’t get shot in school.”
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