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JD Vance has branded his rival Tim Walz a “schoolyard bully” after the Democratic vice presidential candidate coined the buzzword “weird” to describe the Republican ticket.
Walz first dubbed Donald Trump and his running mate “just weird” last month during an interview with MSNBC – propelling him into national headlines and the hotly-contested shortlist to be Harris’ running mate pick.
Now the buzzword has gone viral and, despite their best efforts, the former president and his underling can’t quite shake the nickname off.
During a sweep of the Sunday news programs, Vance hit out at Walz and claimed that the nickname is a form of “projection” and an effort to detract attention from the Democratic candidates’ own perceived shortcomings.
“It drives home how they’re trying to distract from their own policy failures. I mean, look, this is fundamentally schoolyard bully stuff,” he told CNN host Dana Bash on State of the Nation on Sunday.
“And so they’re name-calling instead of actually telling the American people how they’re going to make their lives better. I think that’s weird, Dana, but look, they can call me whatever they want to.”
After parroting the same “weird” insult used against him, the Ohio senator went on to call out Walz for what he claimed to be an “awkward” moment with his wife Gwen.
During Harris’s and Walz’s first rally together last Tuesday, the Minnesota governor “gave his wife a nice, firm Midwestern handshake and then tried to sort of awkwardly correct for it,” Vance mocked.
Harris was said to have liked how “weird” “became a thing” after Walz used the term for Vance, a person involved with Walz’s vetting process before being tapped as her running mate told CNN.
The phrase has continued to be a firm favorite as the duo held a string of rallies across the country in their first week together on the ticket.
“I just have to say it. You know it. You feel it. These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell. That’s what you see,” Walz said during his first campaign speech last Tuesday.
While Vance tries to brush off the nickname, he has been facing a swathe of criticism for his sexist comments about female Democrats being a “bunch of childless cat ladies.”
