Democrats on Wednesday launched a new attack on Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, calling him a “Frankenstein” created by the conservative masterminds of Project 2025.
The nickname came from Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, hours before Vance’s speech as keynote speaker on the third night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Walz called Vance “the perfect Frankenstein monster created by the Heritage Foundation” at a press conference held in Milwaukee, just outside the security perimeter for the GOP’s event.
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Walz hammered Vance for his anti-abortion rights views, including how he has previously said he does not believe in exceptions for rape and incest. And he offered a preview of how Democrats will try to use Trump’s VP pick against him by linking Vance to Project 2025, the ultra-conservative manifesto for a second term written by The Heritage Foundation, which Trump has tried to distance himself from.
Walz said he read Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“The idea that this guy would understand, or have a policy—the things that make small towns work… this was not in Hillbilly Elegy, but it should be: mind your own damn business,” Walz said of abortion rights.
However, when asked by the Daily Beast who is best equipped to challenge Vance and the GOP on abortion—whether that be President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, or everyday Americans like Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who testified before Congress that she nearly lost her life under Texas’ abortion ban to deliver a stillborn child—Walz said it’s not his place to say.
“It’s not my place as a man” to lead the messaging on the issue.
Zurawski joined Walz and the Biden surrogates at the press conference Wednesday. She said what she endured was “nothing short of barbaric” and went at Vance hard for calling exceptions for rape and incest “inconvenient”—something Vance’s camp has pushed back against, saying his words were taken out of context.
“It’s incumbent upon all of us to continue to make that message, and she’s certainly a better deliverer of this message than I,” Walz said, once again ignoring whether Biden can adequately make the same argument.
“Sometimes, as a man,” Walz continued, “it’s time to shut the hell up.”
