J.D. Vance Tries Cowardly Excuse to Get Out of Debating Tim Walz

Donald Trump has tried desperately to back out of his presidential debate with Kamala Harris, which was previously scheduled for September 10—so now, J.D. Vance has offered to take it off his plate.

During Vance’s rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Wednesday, the Republican vice presidential nominee inexplicably invited Harris to debate next week.

“So here’s my offer to Kamala Harris: If she’d like to do a debate with me on August 13, I’ll do it,” Vance said.

Before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Harris had agreed to debate Vance on CBS News on either July 23 or August 13. But Trump declined to commit his running mate to a debate.

In the weeks since, Harris has been elevated to the Democratic presidential nominee (she was officially certified as the nominee on Tuesday), challenging Trump to a debate. While Harris’s circumstances have obviously changed, Vance voiced his skepticism that anything was certain.

“I don’t think she wants to anymore, because one, she probably doesn’t even know that she’s going to be the Democratic nominee, and two we don’t know who the vice presidential nominee is going to be, either,” he said.

Vance claimed that it was still unclear whether Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, whom Harris tapped on Tuesday, would be the nominee because “he’s got a lot of skeletons that are coming out of the closet.”

“We’ll see if the Democrats pull a bait and switch on Tim Walz, or on Kamala Harris, just like they did with Joe Biden,” Vance warned.

Just as Vance can’t seem to come to terms with the fact that he’s not debating Harris anymore, Trump can’t seem to cope without Biden.

On Tuesday night, Trump wrote a surreal post on Truth Social in which he imagined Biden crashing the Democratic National Convention to seize the nomination back from Harris.

Fanfiction aside, Trump and Vance just can’t seem to face the reality that this is a fundamentally different race from the one they signed on for. Their slate of bad excuses for not debating Harris and Walz respectively has betrayed the depths of their obstinate, delusional approach to campaigning, as well as something much more troubling: that the two are plainly incapable of adapting to their new opponents.

Meanwhile, Walz seems more than happy to debate Vance. “I can’t wait to debate the guy,” Walz said at a rally in Pennsylvania Tuesday night. “That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”