Matthew Wilson
Tim Walz is speaking out about running mate and former Vice President Kamala Harris‘s new memoir 107 Days. In the book, Harris was overly critical of Walz, believing his nice guy routine helped cost her the election.
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Harris was critical of his debate against JD Vance last October. Now, speaking during the MinnPost talk, Walz shares his thoughts on Harris and her book. He believes that he did let her down.
- “As far as the book and things like that go, I think she has every right to be critical. I do think I let her down on a couple things,” Walz said. “And I warned them my Minnesota nice thing is if somebody’s being nice to me, I’ll be nice to them … These people have seen me debate. I know my subject. I’m pretty good at it. I don’t think I’m particularly mean.”
Tim Walz Weighs In
In response, moderator Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked Walz to weigh in more. She asked him if he believed that he ultimately boosted JD Vance’s own profile. Walz tried to backpedal and deny that the debate played a major role in the election results.
- “It did matter though, and I think in the moment we were in, in preparing for that, and quite honestly, we did not prepare for him to be more cordial. The expectation was that he would do the false attacks and do some of that. And they didn’t,” the governor said. “So, I’ll give them this — they were well prepared. But my goal was to try and find, you know, getting there. And I’m saying, ‘We all want to fix immigration, but you’re doing the ‘dogs and cats’ stuff. What we’re talking about is fixing the system, adjudicating asylum claims faster.”
- “That was viewed as me trying to find common ground. And the teacher in me, and this is a nervous tick or habit that we have when you’re a teacher, when someone else is speaking next to you, you instinctively nod and listen and try and listen,” he added. “And that was viewed as — and the vice president took it — that I was agreeing on some of the things that were a personal attack on her. And it wasn’t that at all. Because when we’re teachers or in any other one, like, ‘That’s really interesting. It’s dumb as hell but it’s very interesting.’ And I was doing that.”
Harris didn’t mince words in her scathing account of the debate.
“I told the television screen: ‘You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate,’” she wrote.
