Buttigieg brushes off GOP attacks on Harris-Walz ticket: ‘They’re flailing’

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the GOP critics of Vice President Harris’s newly announced running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), are “flailing,” while dismissing the attacks against the Democratic ticket.

“I think they’re flailing right now. They just don’t know how to respond to this campaign that, again, as excited as we are about the VP and her running mate, they’re not making it about themselves. It’s about all of us,” Buttigieg said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.”

Some on the right were quick to slam Harris for choosing Walz, whom former President Trump’s campaign labeled “far left” and a “West Coast wannabe.”

“Of course, they’re trying to say that he’s too far left. They say that about literally any Democrat running against literally any Republican,” Buttigieg said. “If it was [Sen.] Joe Manchin [I-W.Va.], they’d be saying the same thing, because it’s all they know how to say. Of course, that will be refuted.”

Manchin was long considered one of the Senate’s most moderate Democrats, at times bucking the party’s orthodoxies. He changed his party registration to independent in May.

“And they’re just — the Trump campaign doesn’t quite know what to do,” Buttigieg added. “They also definitely don’t know what to do with any effort to unify the country. So, they’re going back to what they always do, which is division.”

Shortly after Trump was shot in the ear in a failed assassination attempt last month, he called on the nation to “stand united,” though these calls quickly dissipated, especially after President Biden ended his candidacy and endorsed Harris to run as his successor.

Buttigieg pointed to Trump’s remarks last week at the National Association for Black Journalists (NABJ) convention, during which the former president questioned Harris’s racial identity.

“You saw it with the abhorrent remarks from Donald Trump at NABJ, really trying to shift the conversation from all of us to him by blurting out these racially charged remarks at the National Association of Black Journalists,” Buttigieg said Tuesday. “Wisely, cleverly, I think Kamala Harris responded to it, condemned it, but then dismissed it and got right back to her message. And I think that’s going to be the same response you will see here.”

Walz, who leads a blue-leaning state, emerged as a dark horse contender and grasped national attention after he labeled the former president and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), as “weird.”

Buttigieg, whose name was floated for a potential running mate for Harris, recommended the Harris-Walz campaign “not take the bait,” warning the GOP will try to redirect the conversation.

“And I think the more the Trump campaign flails in that old, dark, divisive mode, yes, they will grab some attention here and there for whatever outrageous claims they make about our ticket, but I don’t think a lot of it’s going to stick because none of its true and, maybe most importantly, because I think people are just kind of bored with that sort of thing,” he said.