‘I Let Her Down’: Tim Walz Suggests He Was Too ‘Nice’ To JD Vance In Debate

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz suggested during a talk at MinnPost Festival posted to YouTube on Tuesday that he was excessively kind to Vice President JD Vance during their 2024 vice presidential debate. Walz…

Jason Cohen·Oct 1, 2025·4 min read

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Walz stumbled and made gaffes throughout his only debate against Vance on Oct. 1, 2024, which was reported as “largely civil” and “midwestern nice.” Walz said during the MinnPosttalk, which took place on Saturday, that former Vice President Kamala Harris’ criticism of his debate performance in her new book was justified.

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“As far as the book and things like that go, I think she has every right to be critical. I do think I let her down on a couple things,” Walz said. “And I warned them my Minnesota nice thing is if somebody’s being nice to me, I’ll be nice to them … These people have seen me debate. I know my subject. I’m pretty good at it. I don’t think I’m particularly mean.”

Moderator Lulu Garcia-Navarro cut Walz off, asking whether the governor believed he boosted Vance by enabling him to demonstrate “a more collegial side of himself” during the debate. Walz appeared to concede that he had before suggesting that vice presidential debates were insignificant and then immediately backtracking.

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“It did matter though, and I think in the moment we were in, in preparing for that, and quite honestly, we did not prepare for him to be more cordial. The expectation was that he would do the false attacks and do some of that. And they didn’t,” the governor said. “So, I’ll give them this — they were well prepared. But my goal was to try and find, you know, getting there. And I’m saying, ‘We all want to fix immigration, but you’re doing the ‘dogs and cats’ stuff. What we’re talking about is fixing the system, adjudicating asylum claims faster.”

“That was viewed as me trying to find common ground. And the teacher in me, and this is a nervous tick or habit that we have when you’re a teacher, when someone else is speaking next to you, you instinctively nod and listen and try and listen,” he added. “And that was viewed as — and the vice president took it — that I was agreeing on some of the things that were a personal attack on her. And it wasn’t that at all. Because when we’re teachers or in any other one, like, ‘That’s really interesting. It’s dumb as hell but it’s very interesting.’ And I was doing that.”

Herris, in her book “107 Days,” criticized Walz for “nodding and smiling” during the debate and wrote that she believed Vance duped him with “fake bipartisanship” and a kind attitude, according to Fox News.

“I told the television screen: ‘You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate,’” she wrote.

The former vice president also criticized Walz for stumbling when he was asked about a CNN report finding that he had falsely claimed to have been in Hong Kong during the deadly protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, in 1989.

Moreover, a panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Oct. 2, 2024, expressed disappointment over Walz’s inability to combat Vance during the debate, also criticizing his answer on falsely claiming that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre.

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‘I Let Her Down’: Tim Walz Suggests He Was Too ‘Nice’ To JD Vance In Debate — IJR