Vance: Harris 'bent the knee' to progressives with Walz pick

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, on Tuesday suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris "bent the knee" to the far-left wing of her base in selecting Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., as her running mate.

Vance made the remarks at a Philadelphia event after Harris tapped Walz the same day. His own remarks saw him make no reference to Walz's selection, though he addressed the matter in response to reporter questions.

"[T]he reason I didn't say a whole lot about Tim Walz is because the Democrats have showed a willingness to pull a little switcheroo on us. So I don't even know if we're actually going to get Tim Walz out of this campaign," he said. And I think that a lot of us are asking ourselves, well, it's not going to be official until the Democrats actually nominate him, I guess, at their convention next week."

"But I think that what Tim Walz's selection says is that Kamala Harris has bent the knee to the far left of her party, which is what she always does," he went on. "Kamala Harris listened to the Hamas wing of the party. She selected Tim Walz, a guy who wants to ship more manufacturing jobs to China, who wants to give illegal aliens driver's license and who wants to make the Fentanyl crisis that we just heard about so much worse because he refuses to do his job and actually make it easier for American citizens and not illegal aliens, to live a good life."

During the selection process, Walz emerged as a favorite among the party's progressive wing. Harris's selection of him came amid backlash over Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro's support for Israel.

"So I think what it says is that Kamala Harris is running as a San Francisco liberal. She is governed as a San Francisco liberal, and she's chosen a running mate who will be a San Francisco style liberal," he said. "[T]he biggest problem with the Tim Walz pick, it's not Tim Walz himself. It's what it says about Kamala Harris, that when given an opportunity, she will bend the knee to the most radical elements of her party. That's exactly what she did here. That's what she's going to keep on doing as President."