Four questions Tim Walz might face in prime-time CNN interview

CHICAGO — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), will sit for a joint interview with CNN's Dana Bash on Thursday.

The interview will mark Harris's first formal sit-down with a journalist since entering the 2024 race in July. The interview, which will be recorded earlier in the day, will air on CNN at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time.

While many of the questions will undoubtedly focus on her still-forming policy agenda, not to mention a series of flip-flops regarding her previously held positions, Walz's growing list of controversies will also be thrust under the microscope.

Here's what to watch for on Thursday:

Walz's 24-year career in the National Guard made him a natural foil to Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the Republican vice presidential nominee and a U.S. Marine veteran. However, shortly after Walz was selected by Harris, reports surfaced that Walz retired from the military just months before his unit was deployed to Iraq.

Furthermore, after being elected to Congress, Walz allowed others, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), to refer to him as a combat veteran and personally claimed to have fired "weapons of war" in an active combat theater, neither of which is true.

The Harris campaign has sought to do damage control over reporting on Walz's military record, but Thursday will be the first opportunity for voters to hear Walz defend himself on the matter.

Since taking over the Democratic ticket from President Joe Biden, Harris has sought to refashion herself as a "top cop" and highlight her past work as a prosecutor and district attorney, given the high priority voters are placing on crime ahead of November.

However, Walz's handling of the murder of George Floyd as governor might undermine that. Floyd was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which prompted Walz to recall the state legislature for a special session advancing police reform legislation. The Minnesota governor signed that bill into law in July 2020.

Still, Walz could point to his decision to mobilize National Guard assets to help police the "mostly peaceful" protests that blanketed Minneapolis following Floyd's murder as a tough-on-crime approach. That move actually earned him praise from then-President Donald Trump.

With reproductive rights a top issue in 2024, Walz and the Harris campaign have chosen to highlight his family's personal history with fertility treatments as a central part of their pitch to voters, especially as in vitro fertilization has come under attack in some Republican states.

Walz and his wife, Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz, have publicly discussed their "IVF journey" since this past spring, only to make headlines earlier in August by disclosing they used intrauterine insemination, a different, lesser-known fertility treatment, to conceive.

Unlike IVF, IUI does not risk destroying unused embryos and has not been targeted by anti-abortion groups for new state or federal bans. The Harris campaign has denied that the Walzes have been intentionally misleading while discussing their family's journey and that they were simply "using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments."

The glaring elephant in the room is that Thursday's interview won't see Harris or Walz field questions solo.

The announcement of the joint interview on Tuesday reignited a cavalcade of criticism from Republicans, claiming that neither Democratic nominee is capable of defending his or her record.

Those critiques certainly weren't tamped down by a Tuesday morning report from Politico claiming that the Harris campaign was polling journalists on who exactly it should have the vice president sit down with and that officials balked at having Walz do solo interviews over fears he wouldn't be able to elucidate Harris's policy platform properly.

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However, while Republicans might be criticizing Harris for campaigning on vibes and sunshine over hard policy ideas, multiple Democratic strategists with close ties to the vice president's campaign tell the Washington Examiner that a joint interview will help stress the "joyous partnership" Harris is building with Walz.

"What they're doing so far is clearly working, just looking at the enthusiasm, polling, and fundraising numbers," one Democratic operative explained. "That probably won't be enough to flip boomer Republicans, but that was never going to be Harris's strategy in the first place."