Who won the day? Walz.
Walz won the day because he reminded voters why Harris picked him with his shots at Elon Musk.
Tim Walz is hunting big game.
On Tuesday, the Minnesota governor rediscovered the looseness that once had him casting Republicans as “weird,” skewering Donald Trump, JD Vance — and, more than anyone, Trump campaign surrogate Elon Musk.
“I’m going to talk about his running mate — his running mate Elon Musk,” Walz said in Madison, Wisconsin, on the first day of early voting in the Blue Wall battleground. “Seriously, where is Senator Vance after he got asked the simplest question in the world at the debate: Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election, and after two weeks he finally said, ‘No, he didn’t.’”
Next, Walz uncorked on the wealthiest man in the world and the owner of X.
“Look, Elon’s on that stage, jumping around skipping like a dipshit.”
The clip quickly went viral on Musk’s own site.
On a day when his running mate, Kamala Harris, had no events and an interview with MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson, Walz’s line reverberated and drowned out other news on the trail.
And won Walz the day.
In some ways, that Walz has been scarce on the trail and in interviews, of which he’s doing more now.
His performance Tuesday came at a time when Democrats are increasingly desperate to remind voters about the dangers of a second Trump term — particularly in a battleground like Wisconsin. (John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff and the onetime general, offered an assist on that front, kicking off a media tour explaining how Trump had asked “for the kind of generals that Hitler had” and talked of using the military against U.S. citizens, something Harris has been warning about on the trail).
It also comes as Harris continues amid a gender divide to struggle with male voters. She could use some of the same Midwestern bravado that originally landed Walz on her radar this summer.
Harris may have somewhat dampened Walz’s value-add to the ticket when she warned him “to be a little more careful on how you say things,” as he said in a recent interview.
Now, though, Walz is back.
We ask ourselves every night: Who won the day? Now we’ll tell you — every weekday. Last night, it was Trump.