During the early parts of the interview, Walz watched quietly and nodded when Harris made her main points. He was later asked about misstatements, starting with how he has described his 24 years of service in the National Guard.
In a 2018 video clip that the Harris-Walz campaign once circulated, Walz spoke out against gun violence and said, “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.”
Critics said the comment “that I carried in war” suggested that Walz portrayed himself as someone who spent time in a combat zone. He said Thursday night that he misspoke after a school shooting, adding, “My grammar’s not always correct.”
Asked about statements that appeared to indicate that he and his wife conceived their children with in-vitro fertilization, when they in fact used a different fertility treatment, he said he believes most Americans understood what he meant and pivoted to Republican opposition to abortion rights.
Democrats’ enthusiasm about their vote in November has surged over the past few months, according to polling from Gallup. About 8 in 10 Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, compared with 55% in March.
This gives them an enthusiastic edge they did not have earlier this year. Republicans’ enthusiasm has increased by much less over the same period, and about two-thirds of Republicans now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting.
At a packed arena for a rally Thursday in Savannah, Harris cast her nascent campaign as the underdog and encouraged the crowd to work hard to elect her in November.
The rally was the end of a two-day bus tour in southeastern Georgia. Harris has another campaign blitz on Labor Day with Biden in Detroit and Pittsburgh with the election rapidly approaching. The first mail ballots get sent to voters in just two weeks.