MN governor slams 'know nothing' JD Vance: GOP 'policies destroyed rural America'

23 July 2024

Minnesota's Democratic Governor Tim Walz, who is rumored to be a potential running mate for Vice President (and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee) Kamala Harris, recently slammed Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on one of his major biographical claims.

During a Tuesday interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Walz blasted Vance over his claims of expertise on rural America, and contrasted it with his own experience of growing up in a town of 400 people [Chadron, Nebraska] with "24 kids in my graduating class" where "12 were cousins."

"People like JD Vance know nothing about small town America," Walz said. "He gets it all wrong. It's not about hate."

In his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, Vance wrote about his background growing up in a lower-income suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was exposed as a child to relatives in the grip of addiction and mired in poverty. However, Vance ended up enlisting in the military and eventually enrolled at Yale Law School before becoming a venture capitalist in San Francisco, California. Vance's selection as former President Donald Trump's 2024 running mate prompted comedian Trae Crowder (also known as "the liberal redneck") to suggest Vance was a fraud. Walz expressed a similar sentiment on Morning Joe, and accused Trump and Vance of pitting rural Americans against each other.

"Their policies are what destroyed rural America. They divided us. They're in our exam rooms, they're telling us what books to read, and I think what Kamala Harris knows is, bringing people together around the shared values: Strong public schools, strong labor unions that create the middle class, healthcare that's affordable and accessible," he continued. "I think this is going back to the bread-and-butter [issues], getting away from this division."

"We do not like what has happened where we can't even go to Thanksgiving dinner with our uncle because you end up in some weird fight that is necessary," he added. "That's not what people are interested in."

That remark was celebrated by writer P.E. Moskowitz, who tweeted that "'funding schools and bridges instead of making people so insane with social issues that they’re impossible to talk to at [T]hanksgiving' is probably the best political strategy [I]’ve heard in a long time."

Vance's claims of being connected to rural America and Appalachia in particular also ruffled the feathers of Governor Andy Beshear (D-Kentucky), who roasted the Ohio Republican over the weekend. Beshear, who is also on the list of prospective running mates for Harris, notably didn't say no when asked if he would join the ticket.

"I think if somebody calls you on that, then what you do is at least listen, and I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like, cause JD Vance ain't from here," he said.

Watch Walz's segment below, or by clicking this link.

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