Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes, so presidential candidate Kamala Harris is up. Her running mate is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. What is Walz known for? Why did she pick him?

Rick Rosner: Carole told me that it was because he asked, “How can I help?” when they met. She liked that. He seems cheerful. He signed a bill that provides every public school child in Minnesota with free breakfast and lunch, a cheap and effective way to improve educational outcomes. And it also needs means testing. Nobody’s checking to see how much money your family makes before you get your breakfast. They’re trying to call him “Tampon Tim” because he signed a bill to ensure menstrual products are available for kids in grades 4 through 12. There was some controversy because these products are made available to trans boys as well. Any of the accusations from the other side will not stick. He served in the National Guard for 24 years, starting at 17, and rose to the highest possible rank for a non-commissioned officer: Command Master Sergeant. The other side is trying to accuse him of stolen valour.

Stolen valour is when you lie about your military credentials. It’s a six-year program to become a Command Master Sergeant. After four years, he left the National Guard to run for Congress, so he didn’t complete the Command Master Sergeant program. You can call yourself a Command Master Sergeant while training in those six years, but if you leave before completing the program, you revert to your previous rank, like Staff Master Sergeant. So they’re accusing him of stolen valour when he uses Command Master Sergeant.

Nobody will buy that, especially since the ticket he’s running against includes a guy who dodged the draft five times. The other side, the TRP side, also says that Biden received draft deferments. Draft deferments aren’t the same thing as draft dodging. You can receive a deferment if you’re in college, for instance, or at least you could during the Vietnam War. TRP manufactured a medical excuse. And Biden’s not running, so that’s irrelevant.

What else have they accused him of? They’ve accused him of being a far-left radical, that he’s going to confiscate everybody’s guns. He used to be a hunter. There are plenty of pictures of him posing with guns. Anyway, he used to have a 100% rating with the NRA, and then that went to zero when he started backing things like universal gun background checks and red flag laws, common-sense gun laws that are supported by about 70% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans. He was a high school teacher. His wife has been a high school teacher for 29 years. He was a football coach and a defensive coordinator on a team he helped take from 0-27 to winning a state championship. So he seems friendly and likable. 

Not, as they put it, “cringe.” Hillary Clinton was accused of not being able to laugh naturally. They’re trying to accuse Kamala Harris of the same thing, but it doesn’t stick because she smiles a lot, and it doesn’t look artificial. And this Tim guy looks the same. He looks like a friendly guy, and I don’t think any accusations will stick. Of course, we’ve only had him as the candidate for a few hours. He got a DWI in 1995. He was driving 96 miles an hour with a blood alcohol level of 0.128, which is more than one and a half times the legal limit. But he’s not trying to cover that up, and that was 29 years ago. So I would guess that by Election Day, and maybe even before that, Harris and Walz will have the same lead in the polls that Biden did in 2020.

Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org

Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com

License & Copyright

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash