Michael Whatley says Harris didn’t get ‘knockout’ performance from Walz at debate

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley argued Vice President Kamala Harris did not get the “knockout” performance she was looking for from Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who is “not ready for prime time.”

Harris’s running mate has come under some scrutiny after Tuesday night’s debate against Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), specifically over his comments that he “misspoke” about his past visits to China and claiming he has “become friends with school shooters.”

When asked if Walz hurt Harris’s electability at all with his debate performance, Whatley argued that he did thanks to the “number of gaffes” he made that viewers at home watched.

“Look, the mainstream media and all of the other outlets, including Newsmax, were able to go back and get clips out of that, to get messaging focus out of the debate, and they just showed, again and again and again, J.D. Vance hitting his mark and talking to the American voters,” Whatley said on Newsmax’s The National Report. “Kamala Harris needed a knockout in that debate. She didn’t get it.”

Whatley also suggested the Democratic Party has both a “messenger problem” and a “message problem,” stating that voters are concerned about the cost of living and illegal immigration. He claimed that neither Walz nor the debate moderators wanted to address either of these topics and praised Vance for addressing them and what former President Donald Trump would do in office to fix these topics.

The RNC chairman was also asked about the possibility of Trump doing another debate with Harris, as this could be “the October surprise” of the 2024 election cycle. Whatley said he could not see a second debate with Harris happening “at this point in time,” citing how early voting has already started in a number of states.

When confronted about Trump’s decision to pass on a sit-down interview with CBS News’s 60 Minutes, Whatley stated the former president would not partake in “an ambush interview.” He also cited how the CBS News debate moderators broke their debate rules and fact-checked Vance during the vice presidential debate, which drew online pushback toward the network.

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Last month, Whatley argued that the Trump campaign and the RNC are “playing offense” on the 2024 trail and that their messaging is “cutting through all of the clutter” on the Democratic Party’s aisle. He also made the case that Harris would not be able to distance herself from President Joe Biden when voters head to the ballot box.

This weekend, Trump will conduct a number of rallies in swing states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan. His Pennsylvania rally will be held Saturday in Butler, the same location where he narrowly survived the first assassination attempt on his life.