EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance stunned reporters Wednesday by attempting to confront Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, on the tarmac here when their planes arrived at about the same time.
“I figured I’d come by and, one, just get a good look at the plane because hopefully it’s going to be my plane in a few months,” the Ohio senator told campaign reporters after approaching Air Force Two.
“I also thought you guys might get lonely because the vice president doesn’t answer questions from reporters and hasn’t for 17 days.”
The unexpected stunt snatched attention away from a large nearby rally featuring Harris, 59, and Walz, the 60-year-old Minnesota governor who joined the Democratic ticket on Tuesday.
Harris and Walz posed for pictures with Girl Scout Troop 3307 on the tarmac shortly before Vance overshadowed their first joint Midwestern campaign stop.
The Democratic candidates seemed to have left seconds before their rival walked over.
Harris’ campaign attempted to mock Vance by posting video of his plane landing at the Eau Claire airport with the TikTok-style oral caption, “all of a sudden, I hear this agitating, grating voice.”
“Make sure AF2 is deep cleaned because Lord only knows what @KamalaHarris and her team have done on there,” Trump-Vance campaign spokesman Steven Cheung tweeted back.
“The smell alone on that plane must be crazy.”
Vance’s approach seemed to be a spur-of-the-moment decision — after he accused Walz of “stolen valor” and faulted Harris’ performance as President Biden’s designated point person on reducing illegal immigration at a Michigan event earlier in the day.
“Have they given you guys an explanation for why she won’t take questions from reporters?” Vance, 40, asked the press.
He said it was “insulting” to Americans that Harris hasn’t been giving interviews.
“I’d love her to just answer what she wants to do and also explain why every single position she has has changed,” Vance said.
“She pretends to be a tough-on-crime prosecutor and yet here she is wanting to defund the police. She’s the border czar, yet she’s opened up the American southern border.”
Vance concluded, “This is a person who has to answer questions from the media and it’s disgraceful that she runs from you guys, and it’s also insulting to the American people.”
Vance drove home similar themes at his event in Michigan earlier Wednesday.
“I’m the father of a 2-year-old girl. I cannot imagine having a government that cares so little about you that they’re letting people who come into our communities get deported and come back in and then they rape our children,” Vance said.
“That is a policy choice of Kamala Harris.”
Vance also tore into Walz after the Minnesota governor ridiculed him at his first rally as Harris’ running mate Tuesday night in Philadelphia.
At that rally, Walz mocked Vance for touting ties to Appalachia despite attending Yale University and even alluded to a debunked internet claim that the senator admitted having sex with a couch in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“What bothers me about Tim Waltz is the stolen valor garbage,” Vance said of Walz, who left the National Guard in 2005 shortly after his battalion was ordered to deploy to the Iraq war.
Vance, who did serve in the Iraq war, said: “Do not pretend to be something that you’re not. And if he wants to criticize me for getting an Ivy League education, I’m proud of the fact that my mamaw supported me, that I was able to make something of myself. I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service.”
In a video that went viral Wednesday, Walz is heard promoting gun control by referring to “weapons of war that I carried in war.”
Harris’ decision to avoid early interviews has helped prolong the “honeymoon” phase of her candidacy, which has featured surging donations from freshly enthused Democrats and very little negative coverage.
Although Harris has given few on-the-record answers to reporters since Biden, 81, dropped his re-election bid on July 21 and endorsed her as his successor, she has frequently gaggled off the record with reporters on Air Force Two.
Harris spoke off the record with the press for four minutes Tuesday afternoon and five minutes on Wednesday aboard her vice presidential jet — answering questions about various topics but not permitting those answers to be reported.
A Post reporter was part of the Tuesday gaggle and a New York Times reporter served as the primary representative of the press corps Wednesday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for more updates.
