JD Vance slams Kamala Harris in event minutes from her Eau Claire rally with Tim Walz
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance made his first official campaign stop in Wisconsin since former President Donald Trump tapped the Ohio senator to be his running mate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month.
Vance's stop in Eau Claire took place minutes apart on the same day Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and her newly minted running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, held a campaign rally 3.6 miles away in the same western Wisconsin city as part of a battleground states tour.
Vance slammed Harris in remarks that concluded just before Walz took the stage to introduce Harris, accusing her of avoiding media interviews and running a "basement campaign." She "deserves to be fired" instead of promoted to president, he said at the event that was largely in the form of a news conference with local media.
"Now, it's well-known of course, that President Trump and I will go anywhere, will answer any question because we respect the American people enough to actually ask them for their vote rather than sit in front of a teleprompter, read scripted lines and run away from every reporter and every actual citizen who's going to decide this election," he said.
"I think it's a scandal, and I think the vice president should be ashamed of herself."
The Harris-Walz battleground state tour started in Pennsylvania Tuesday night and will continue on to Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. Vance is making appearances in the same cities on the Democratic tour this week, a practice known as "bracketing" in politics.
He also joked about how he saw Air Force Two at the local Eau Claire airport, when his own plane landed.
"I went over there because I thought it might be nice to check out this plane that's going to be mine in a few months if we all take care of business, and I think we will," he said.
The Harris-Walz campaign in a statement said Eau Claire voters would see "the split screen for themselves between the forward-looking vision of Harris-Walz and the divisive agenda of Donald Trump and JD Vance."
A Marquette Law School poll released just before the event began found Harris and Trump in a statistical dead heat in Wisconsin, a critical swing state in November's presidential election. The poll was the first time a head-to-head between the two candidates had been measured since President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, and Harris became the Democratic Party's nominee.
While Harris held a rally, Vance's event was more intimate.
Employees of Wollard International flanked Vance as he spoke on the manufacturing floor of the warehouse. There was no stage at the small event, and instead a small group of supporters and media gathered around a podium to hear from the vice presidential hopeful. No one spoke at the event aside from Vance, and no other local or state politicians were in the gathered group.
Vance took questions on Wisconsin topics from election integrity to local hospital closures and the failed Foxconn deal negotiated during Trump's first term.
On elections in Wisconsin, he said the state should avoid taking money from "big tech millionaires" to help local municipalities run elections, as was done in 2020 with grants funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, which were distributed in 2020 by the Center for Tech and Civic Life.
Republicans have slammed private grants, which they often call "Zuckerbucks," the bulk of which went to the state's five largest cities to help run elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said that aside from that there is reason to be "optimistic" about the upcoming election in the Dairy State.
"President Trump and I want there to be a free and fair election because we want every legal vote to count. That's the hallmark of America's constitutional republic is that everybody's vote has to count. But for everybody's vote to count, everything has to be safe and secure," he said. "I feel a lot of confidence about Wisconsin, but certainly as a campaign, we're going to continue to monitor things. We're going to continue to make sure that people are doing things the right way."
He also commented on the closure of several local hospitals, which has left the Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls area without much of the medical care it once had. The shuttered services included an addiction resource center.
"We've seen a lot of rural hospitals, hospitals and small towns closed down. You cannot have a good health care system, you're never going to help people beat addiction if they've got to drive 90 minutes to the closest hospital," he said. "So we've got to preserve the rural health care infrastructure that exists in this country."
And of the Foxconn project, which was heavily touted by Trump in the last election, Vance said not every manufacturing facility is "going to work out perfectly." He said the Trump campaign will support tariffs on Chinese goods and more of an investment in American labor and the harvesting of oil from American soil.
"Everything is too expensive, which makes it hard to manufacture and build things in the United States of America," he said. "The Donald Trump agenda is drill, baby drill, get this stuff out of the ground with American workers, get it out of American territory, and drive down the cost of manufacturing so we can make more things in this country and stamp more products 'Made in the USA.'"
Vance also joked about his fellow Midwestern vice presidential opposition, Walz, who in recent interviews has called both Trump and Vance "weird." The Democrats are going to attack the Trump campaign about something, Vance said, but it shouldn't be coming from a man who acted "weird" at his own campaign event yesterday alongside Harris.
"I mean, talk about weird with Tim Walz... afterwards, his wife comes up to him and Tim Walz does what any normal Midwestern guy would do," he said. "Seeing his beautiful wife on stage after speech, he gives her a firm handshake. Right, that's pretty weird."
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin, in response to Vance's visit, kept the drumbeat going.
“For a self-proclaimed ‘normal guy,’ JD Vance’s trip to Eau Claire today was just plain weird," Deputy Communications Director Haley McCoy said in a statement. "JD Vance should focus more on answering for Donald Trump’s horrible record and the chaos Trump unleashed on our country and less about landing awkward jokes and trailing after Vice President Harris and Governor Walz like an obsessed groupie.”
Laura Schulte and Alison Dirr can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: JD Vance makes first Wisconsin appearance since being tapped by Trump
