Trump Criticizes Harris and Walz in Fox News Appearance and Suggests a Debate Will Happen
"After saying days ago that he would not participate in a September debate on ABC, Mr. Trump said, “We’ll be debating her, I guess, in the pretty near future.”
In an appearance on Fox News early Wednesday morning, former President Donald J. Trump called the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota “communist” and suggested he was willing to debate Ms. Harris anywhere, despite having pulled out of a scheduled debate.
He also hit at Mr. Walz over an interaction they had in April 2020, one which at the time led to the then president tweeting: “Received a very nice call from @GovTimWalz of Minnesota. We are working closely on getting him all he needs, and fast. Good things happening!”
He described Mr. Walz as calling him for help because he was scared of protesters outside his home, though reporting at the time described Mr. Walz asking Mr. Trump to help Minnesota get more personal protective equipment and increase its Covid testing capacity so that he could let businesses reopen in the early days of the pandemic.
Representatives for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Claire Lancaster, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walz, said the subject of that call was P.P.E. and testing capacity, not the protests.
Beyond his claims about the 2020 interaction with Mr. Walz, Mr. Trump stuck mainly to the arguments that other Republicans have advanced since Ms. Harris announced her running mate on Tuesday: that Mr. Walz is too liberal and that Ms. Harris rejected Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania because he is Jewish.
In the interview, on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump repeated an attack that he has made many times before and that has been criticized as antisemitic, saying any Jewish person who voted for Democrats “should have their head examined.”
“He’s probably about the same as Bernie Sanders,” he said of Mr. Walz’s ideology. “He’s probably more so than Bernie Sanders. She is more so than Bernie Sanders. That’s got to be your guy, Bernie Sanders, and that’s not a great guy. But there has never been a ticket like this. This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner. We want no security. We want no anything. He’s heavy into transgender.”
He then suggested that he planned to debate Ms. Harris, a few days after he wrote in a social media post that he would drop out of a scheduled debate on ABC News and suggested one on Fox News instead.
“I don’t know how she debates. I heard she’s sort of a nasty person,” he said, repeating an insult that he has used against several women, including Hillary Clinton, the former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and the ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott. “But not a good debater. But we’ll see, because we’ll be debating her, I guess, in the pretty near future. It’s going to be announced fairly soon.”
“I’d love to see it on Fox, but, you know, it takes two to tango,” he added after referring to the ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos as “Slopadopoulos.” “Look, she doesn’t want to debate.”
Ms. Harris had agreed to the ABC News debate and criticized Mr. Trump for canceling it last week. “Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage,” she said at a rally. “Because as the saying goes, ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.’”
The Fox News hosts also asked Mr. Trump to respond to a criticism Mr. Walz made at his and Ms. Harris’s rally on Tuesday night. Mr. Trump “never sat at that kitchen table like the one I grew up at, wondering how we were going to pay the bills,” Mr. Walz said. “He sat at his country club in Mar-a-Lago wondering how he could cut taxes for his rich friends.”
Mr. Trump said he had built businesses and created jobs, claimed falsely that his administration was “the most successful administration from the economy standpoint there ever was,” and pointed to inflation under President Biden.
“I was not always sitting at Mar-a-Lago, either,” he added. “I was sitting at lots of other places.”
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