AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — No more “Midwest nice.”
Ohio Sen. JD Vance, back on the campaign trail after his matchup with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, eschewed the debate-stage niceties that marked their relatively cordial meeting and went back on the offensive Wednesday.
Coming off a debate performance that former President Donald Trump described as “fantastic,” saying it “reconfirmed his choice” of a running mate in an interview with Fox News, Vance delved into his recap of the debate within minutes of beginning campaign remarks in the northern Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills on Wednesday afternoon.
“Now, we, of course, had a debate last night — a vice presidential debate. I thought it went pretty well,” Vance said, then telling the crowd packed into an aerospace company warehouse that he spoke with Trump last night after getting off the stage.
“He said that Tim Walz said that he was friends with school shooters twice, and that’s something I actually didn’t notice, that Tim Walz had said that on the debate stage,” Vance said, recounting the conversation with his running mate. From there, the story quickly pivoted into a new attack on his Democratic counterpart: “That was probably only the third or fourth dumbest comment Tim Walz made that night then.”
It was a far cry from the litany of times Vance emphasized he agreed with Walz onstage in New York. And Walz was not the only member of the Democratic ticket to catch barbs from the Republican vice presidential hopeful as he reveled in the traditional VP role of attack dog Wednesday.
