This should be interesting, wouldn't be surprised if this is the most viewed VP debate ever. CNN is already making excuses for tampon.
Tim Walz is telling people he’s just as nervous about facing JD Vance as he was the Sunday afternoon in August when he warned Kamala Harris in his running mate interview that he was a bad debater.
Maybe more nervous, according to multiple people who’ve spoken to him.
And the pressure is even higher, when for the first time in modern campaign history, the vice presidential debate Tuesday is likely to be the last marquee event before Election Day. With many voters still saying they don’t know enough about Harris, it could be up to Walz to help convince them to trust a vice president he barely knew himself before she picked him.
Talking to the aides who have coalesced around him in Minnesota and other supporters, Walz constantly comes back to how worried he is about letting Harris down, according to close to a dozen top campaign staffers and others who have been in touch with the governor and his team. He doesn’t want Donald Trump to win. He doesn’t want Harris to think she made the wrong choice.
He feels genuine contempt for and confusion over what he views as Vance’s abandonment of their common roots, and for flipping so many of his positions to fit with Trump. The digs he takes at Vance by saying he didn’t know many Midwesterners who went to Yale are a glimpse into his anxiety that his opponent learned to be a sharp debater there, according to people who know Walz.
And aides insist this isn’t just about setting expectations.
“He’s a strong person,” said Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who’s known Walz since they were each first elected to Washington in 2006. “He’s just not a lawyer-debater type. It’s not like he was dreaming of debates when he was in first grade.”
Walz is confident in Harris’ vision. But the governor fears he won’t make his case as well as he needs to, according to people who have been speaking with him.
“How’s debate prep going?” one person at an exclusive high-dollar fundraiser asked Walz as he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in megadonor Alex Soros’ penthouse living room in Manhattan on Monday.
“As teachers, we are trained to answer the question, and we train our students to answer the questions,” the person recalled Walz saying. “That’s not how this goes.”
In long sessions that have gone late into the night and through weekends, Walz and his team have been balancing managing the Minnesota governor’s headspace, watching videos of Vance and holding mock sessions with stand-ins for the moderators, with Pete Buttigieg playing the Ohio senator. (Though the Transportation secretary is not going as method as Harris’ Trump stand-in did and growing out a beard.)
The plan for Tuesday night, several people involved told CNN, will be to largely skip Vance and go right at Trump – but to also squeeze the senator between his attempts to appeal to undecided voters and the always tricky task of satisfying America’s most prominent audience of one.
If they get their way, Trump will be triggered into a storm of anger, jealousy and pique as easily as he was when Harris poked him at their debate. Their goal is for Walz to lean into his likability to hammer Vance over “Project 2025” and for “selling his soul to Donald Trump,” as Walz put it at another New York fundraiser.
People involved say Walz may even try a line that originated when Harris was preparing for a vice presidential debate before Joe Biden dropped out: asking Vance what promises he made to Trump so the former president wouldn’t send an angry mob after him with a gallows, like Mike Pence experienced on January 6.
Walz and his team want commonsense indignation to come across, according to several in the know. Their worry is that Vance is going to eviscerate the governor’s hand-to-his-heart, dad-joke persona and make Walz come across as either a moron or a raging bull, or even an out-of-whack liberal vouching for another out-of-whack liberal.
Tim Walz is telling people he’s just as nervous about facing JD Vance as he was the Sunday afternoon in August when he warned Kamala Harris in his running mate interview that he was a bad debater.
Maybe more nervous, according to multiple people who’ve spoken to him.
And the pressure is even higher, when for the first time in modern campaign history, the vice presidential debate Tuesday is likely to be the last marquee event before Election Day. With many voters still saying they don’t know enough about Harris, it could be up to Walz to help convince them to trust a vice president he barely knew himself before she picked him.
Talking to the aides who have coalesced around him in Minnesota and other supporters, Walz constantly comes back to how worried he is about letting Harris down, according to close to a dozen top campaign staffers and others who have been in touch with the governor and his team. He doesn’t want Donald Trump to win. He doesn’t want Harris to think she made the wrong choice.
He feels genuine contempt for and confusion over what he views as Vance’s abandonment of their common roots, and for flipping so many of his positions to fit with Trump. The digs he takes at Vance by saying he didn’t know many Midwesterners who went to Yale are a glimpse into his anxiety that his opponent learned to be a sharp debater there, according to people who know Walz.
And aides insist this isn’t just about setting expectations.
“He’s a strong person,” said Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who’s known Walz since they were each first elected to Washington in 2006. “He’s just not a lawyer-debater type. It’s not like he was dreaming of debates when he was in first grade.”
Walz is confident in Harris’ vision. But the governor fears he won’t make his case as well as he needs to, according to people who have been speaking with him.
“How’s debate prep going?” one person at an exclusive high-dollar fundraiser asked Walz as he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in megadonor Alex Soros’ penthouse living room in Manhattan on Monday.
“As teachers, we are trained to answer the question, and we train our students to answer the questions,” the person recalled Walz saying. “That’s not how this goes.”
In long sessions that have gone late into the night and through weekends, Walz and his team have been balancing managing the Minnesota governor’s headspace, watching videos of Vance and holding mock sessions with stand-ins for the moderators, with Pete Buttigieg playing the Ohio senator. (Though the Transportation secretary is not going as method as Harris’ Trump stand-in did and growing out a beard.)
The plan for Tuesday night, several people involved told CNN, will be to largely skip Vance and go right at Trump – but to also squeeze the senator between his attempts to appeal to undecided voters and the always tricky task of satisfying America’s most prominent audience of one.
If they get their way, Trump will be triggered into a storm of anger, jealousy and pique as easily as he was when Harris poked him at their debate. Their goal is for Walz to lean into his likability to hammer Vance over “Project 2025” and for “selling his soul to Donald Trump,” as Walz put it at another New York fundraiser.
People involved say Walz may even try a line that originated when Harris was preparing for a vice presidential debate before Joe Biden dropped out: asking Vance what promises he made to Trump so the former president wouldn’t send an angry mob after him with a gallows, like Mike Pence experienced on January 6.
Walz and his team want commonsense indignation to come across, according to several in the know. Their worry is that Vance is going to eviscerate the governor’s hand-to-his-heart, dad-joke persona and make Walz come across as either a moron or a raging bull, or even an out-of-whack liberal vouching for another out-of-whack liberal.
