MINNEAPOLIS — The Trump Campaign Monday hosted a national conference call featuring several Minnesotans ahead of Tuesday's vice presidential debate. The Harris Campaign, for its part, held a press conference to punctuate reproductive rights.
Gov. Walz will face off with Ohio Sen. JD Vance in the CBS Studios in New York Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. for what will most likely be their only meeting before Election Day.
Congressman Tom Emmer, the Republican House Majority Whip, told reporters Walz isn’t the good-natured everyman that he comes across as in his campaign rallies. Emmer, who played Walz in debate rehearsals with Vance, said Walz is far more liberal than he’d have you believe.
"He's a good debater. He will stand there, and he lies with conviction," Emmer told reporters. "And he has little mannerism, where it's just, 'Hey, I'm the nice guy.' But he's not nice at all."
Trump's senior campaign adviser Jason Miller cautioned that Vance is not as experienced in debates as Walz, who has been running for elected office and winning consistently since 2006.
"Tim Walz is very good in debates. Really good. He’s been a politician for 20 years," Miller said.
"He’s not going to be the wildly, gesticulating, effeminate caricature we see at rallies pointing to Kamala Harris and dancing about on the stage. Walz is going to be buttoned up. He’ll be ready to defend his own radical left record in Minnesota."
Miller predicted that Vance will hammer away at Walz over the spike in illegal immigration during the Biden-Harris years and will highlight violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
"What Kamala Harris has done has turned every community in the United States into a border community. Nobody is safe anymore."
The Harris campaign, by contrast, kept the focus on reproductive rights and fertility issues. State lawmakers and abortion rights advocates called out Vance for previous statements that he’d support an abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest.
"Trump and Vance have a plan to give Trump unprecedented, unchecked power to roll back reproductive rights, raise the cost for middle class families and threaten our democracy," Sen. Erin Maye Quade, an Apple Valley Democrat, told reporters.
"Now, more than one in three women across the country live under an abortion ban. Women are being turned away from emergency rooms begging for care. Doctors are facing the threat of jail time for doing their jobs."
The event, at Frogtown Community Center, featured women who had needed abortions for medical reasons.
“The only reason I have my three beautiful boys today is because I had an abortion. Without it I might not have a uterus, and I might not have my family,” Tippy Amundson said.
During her first pregnancy she learned at 20 weeks that her baby would not be viable after birth but would pose a health risk to her if she carried it to term.
DFL Rep. Kaohly Her of St. Paul revealed she too required an abortion earlier in her life.
“I myself have had an abortion after suffering an ectopic pregnancy. I found my way to a reproductive health clinic where I got the medical care I needed to save my life.”
During the Trump Campaign’s conference call, national reporters also heard from Tom Behrends, who served with Walz in the Minnesota National Guard and has claimed — without proof — that Walz retired after learning their unit would be deployed to Iraq.
“When the nation called, Tim Walz hung up and ran the other way.”
The National Guard’s official records conflict with Behrend's account. A Guard spokesperson said that Walz left in May 2005 — two months before his unit received a special alert about a possible deployment and three months before receiving it received a mobilization order.
“The Minnesota National Guard can confirm the 1-125 Field Artillery Battalion received an alert order on July 14, 2005. An alert order is a notification for possible mobilization. The unit received a mobilization order on Aug. 14, 2005,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé told KARE.
“The Minnesota National Guard confirms Governor Timothy James Walz served from April 8, 1981, to May 16, 2005.”
Nevertheless, the fact that Behrends appeared in the Trump Campaign’s event indicates Vance will confront Walz about the timing of his retirement from the military.