Biting mockery of J.D. Vance: Tim Walz immediately takes a confrontational approach

ntv.de Biting mockery of J.D. Vance: Tim Walz immediately takes a confrontational approach 2 hours • 2 minutes reading time Tim Walz has only been in the running as a potential US Vice President for a few hours, and he is already giving his first campaign speech. In Philadelphia, he made the first attacks on Trump and J.D. Vance - and they are quite powerful. Tim Walz is courting Vance's clientele: the rural white middle class. In his first speech as "running mate" of the Democratic US presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Tim Walz launched a verbal attack on the Republican opposition. The focus of his criticism was, among other things, Donald Trump's vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance, whom he addressed with sarcastic words: "Like all normal people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at (the elite university) Yale, had his career financed by billionaires and then wrote a bestseller in which he slammed the people in his home country," said Walz. Walz went below the belt with another remark about his competitor: "I can't wait to debate the guy - when he gets up off the couch." The sharp-tongued comment refers to a raunchy story about Vance that has been doing the rounds online for a good week. The Republican is said to have described for pages how he penetrated an upholstered piece of furniture in his autobiographical bestseller "Hillybilly Elegy". That's not true, but the Internet is full of jokes to that effect. Just a few hours before the start of the joint election campaign, Harris announced her decision for Walz as her running mate after long speculation about the person. The two then made their first joint campaign appearance in Philadelphia in the US state of Pennsylvania. The duo was greeted with thunderous cheers. Counter-proposal to Trump In his speech, Walz also attacked the Republican presidential candidate Trump and accused him of sowing "chaos and division". "Donald Trump is not fighting for you or your family," said Walz. "He never sat at a kitchen table like the one I grew up at, where we wondered how we were going to pay the bills. He sat in his country club in Mar-a-Lago and thought about how he could lower taxes for his rich friends." Walz presented himself and Harris as a political counter-proposal to this. "She believes in the chance for every individual to rise into the middle class. She believes in the promise of America. We just have to fight," said Walz. He thanked Harris for her trust and - looking at the mood in the room - "perhaps even more for bringing the joy back." The 60-year-old has been governor of the state of Minnesota since 2019 and previously served for a long time as a member of the House of Representatives. Before his political career, he was a social studies teacher. In his speech, Walz highlighted this, along with his childhood in the rural US state of Nebraska, as well as his time in the National Guard.