Media

Tim Walz Defends Dick and Liz Cheney to Very Skeptical Jon Stewart

‘BIG TENT’

The VP candidate told Stewart that “having the Cheneys on board” gives people “permission” to “do the right thing.”

Tim Walz and Jon Stewart
Comedy Central/screengrab

Jon Stewart just about lost his cool Monday night when Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz drew a comparison between the Cheneys’ support of Kamala Harris’ campaign to Taylor Swift’s.

“No, you can’t [compare] Dick Cheney or Taylor Swift,” The Daily Show host responded to Walz, who was defending his running mate campaigning with Republican former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and touting the endorsement of her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. “What big country did Taylor Swift get us to invade? No!”

Walz had just attempted to equate “Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney, and Taylor Swift” to drive home his subsequent point that the Harris camp is “a big tent” and “having the Cheneys on board” is a good thing, after Stewart asked, “The Cheney thing—do we really have to do that?”

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Walz answered in the affirmative: “There are a lot of people out there” who “Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney give permission” to “find a reason to do the right thing,” he explained.

But Stewart, who famously hosted The Daily Show through the George W. Bush years, just couldn’t wrap his mind around Harris aligning herself with a political family like the Cheneys.

“We’re not gonna take their foreign policy decisions and discussions and implement those,” Walz tried to assure him.

“Promise?” Stewart responded.

Walz did promise, eliciting laughs from the crowd and pointing out that “this is a stressful time.” However, he said, Stewart needn’t worry. Campaigning with the Cheneys to keep Donald Trump out of office “doesn’t mean they agree with us,” he insisted.