JD Vance talks Tim Walz, Ukraine, and Ohio State football with Semafor

Vance began his trip at the Shelby Township Police Department in Michigan with his first major attack on Walz, accusing him of “stolen valor” in describing his 24-year career in the Army National Guard. He argued Walz had deliberately “abandoned” his unit by retiring to run for Congress before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military service by referencing weapons he “carried in war” despite not serving in combat. (CNN reported that Walz officially retired in May 2005, two months after a campaign release noting he’d been informed his unit could possibly be deployed, but two months before they received official orders. “It’s unclear” when he submitted retirement papers, the article noted. The Harris campaign told CNN that his gun remarks were meant to highlight his experience with “weapons of war” the party seeks to restrict).

“I think that’s going to follow him around, because veterans, and I think non-veterans, are really pissed off that he claimed to do something that he didn’t do,” he told Semafor.

Democrats celebrated Walz’s selection in part as a progressive rejoinder to Vance and his famed Ohio biography. Walz has Nebraska roots, an accomplished record as a high school football coach, a fondness for hunting and Diet Mountain Dew, and has been more than happy to weaponize all of it against the Republican vice presidential nominee, who he’s mocked as “weird” and derided as a “phony” backed by Silicon Valley billionaires.

Vance said he was unimpressed with the idea the Midwestern dad act would play well in the areas that formed the base of the Trump coalition.

“I think that suggests that people are more motivated by style than substance, and if you look at why most Rust Belt voters gravitated toward Donald Trump, it was over things like immigration, about tariffs, about protecting American manufacturing jobs. Walz is atrocious on all of those issues,” Vance said. “So the idea that you can advocate for policies that open up America’s borders, that ship American manufacturing jobs overseas, but they’re going to vote for you because you wear a t-shirt and, you know, you have a trucker hat — I think it’s actually insulting to most voters.”

Walz has been regarded as a policy competitor to Vance as well, especially when it came to issues related to families and children. His signature legislation in Minnesota was providing free meals to students. He also passed expanded child tax credits and paid family leave. Some Democrats are eager to contrast that vision with Vance, who spent much of his early days as Trump’s running mate clarifying remarks about “childless cat ladies” in the other party who he claimed were anti-family.

Asked about Walz’s legislative achievements, Vance did not dismiss them out of hand, noting that he “certainly think(s) that we don’t want kids starving in school” and that Walz, like all politicians, is not “wrong on 100% of issues.”

But he also argued Walz’s overall record — his “total world view” — was detrimental to the family. He cited legislation Walz signed establishing Minnesota as a refuge for transgender youth affected by laws restricting gender-affirming care in other states, which he called “really dark stuff” that undermined parental rights (the law allows courts to resolve custody disputes in which parents disagree with each other over a child’s treatment). He more broadly accused Walz of hurting the “security and prosperity” of the state with poor management.

“I don’t buy the idea that he’s pro-family,” Vance told Semafor. “I’m sure he’s not wrong about everything.”

Vance stressed throughout his trip that the top of the ticket was what mattered more. At his stop in Wisconsin, he told reporters that he agreed with Trump, who has maintained that most people vote for the presidential nominee. When pressed about Walz in our own interview, he argued that what was more important was what the pick “says about Kamala Harris.”

“That’s ultimately who’s going to govern, and that’s ultimately who the American people are going to think about when they’re voting,” Vance said. “But I think fundamentally, he comes from the far left of the Democratic Party.”

The presidential contenders might matter the most, but Vance has become arguably a bigger target for Democrats than Trump since he became his running mate. The party has cast him as a vector for right-wing interests they argue will dominate Trump’s agenda should he win office, especially on issues like abortion.

On Wednesday, Vance was dealing with a fresh Washington Post story about his longtime texting relationship with Charles Johnson, a notorious Internet troll the Republican Jewish Coalition had labeled a “Holocaust denier” — the kind of association Democrats were eager to call “weird” and extreme. Vance told me he was unaware when he met Johnson briefly during a business meeting years ago that he was “tied into all these sort of right-wing universes” and said that he was “very skeptical of his bullshit” in their leaked text messages.

“So I mean, part of it is just, I talk to people, and I don’t obviously endorse their views by talking to them,” he said. He added: “He’s kind of a crazy person. He’s kind of pathetic, and I just largely ignored him. Sometimes I would push back. If I thought he said something interesting, I’d inquire about it, and that’s how it was.”

Vance’s elevation to the ticket was controversial within a certain sect of the Republican Party, in part because of his outspoken opposition to aid to Ukraine, which passed earlier this year with the support of Republican leaders in Congress.

Vance told Semafor he rejected arguments from Ukraine supporters, including the Biden administration, that investing in the country’s defense was necessary to deter Russian aggression against NATO allies.

“You don’t have to believe that Putin is a good guy — I certainly don’t — but you have to ask yourself, what are his actual capabilities?” he said. “I think he’s shown in Ukraine that he can’t go that far.”

Vance said that he and Trump would maintain the historic friendship with Europe, but demand they be “self-sufficient” both in their military capacity and their ability to power their countries without Russian energy.

“When the Harris administration says if we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, he’s gonna march all the way to Germany, one, it’s not true, and two, what does that say about Germany’s defense capabilities?” he said. “It’s the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world, if they can’t repel a Russian invasion that does not suggest America should effectively serve as a security protector for Germany, that suggests the Germans ought to get off their ass and invest in their own defense.”

Turning to the Middle East, where Israel and the US were bracing for a potentially imminent attack from Iran and its allied groups in the region, Vance said he doesn’t “want America to put ground troops anywhere in the Middle East right now, at least any more than we already have them” and that Israel did not want them to either.

“The Israelis are smart about their interests,” he said. “They recognize that there are limitations. They recognize that there are, like, very significant problems with, for example, Iran getting a nuclear weapon. But they’re a smart country that knows how to pursue their interests. What they need from an ally, I think, is support, not for us to step in and do for them what we do for Europe.”

Walz has been described as a “happy warrior” in the press, which has highlighted his upbeat attitude even as he delivers some below-the-belt attacks. Vance’s first impression has been a little rougher: On Wednesday a local Fox reporter in Michigan noted his reputation for being “a little angry sometimes” and asked him to name something that made him happy. Vance initially replied by citing “a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media.” The Harris campaign quickly shared the clip.

In his conversation with Semafor, though, his mood brightened immediately as soon as I brought up Ohio State football and their coach Ryan Day.

“Holy shit, she asked me if they should ditch Ryan Day if they lose for the fourth year in a row [to Michigan],” he told his aides, laughing deeply. “Look, I have to give a diplomatic answer here: Look, Ohio State fans, I’m certainly among them — we have been spoiled by the last 15 years of the OSU/Michigan rivalry, and I think that I really want us to win, and I’ll be really pissed off as a fourth year in a row, but that’s all I’ll say.”

I told him I’d check back after their next game.

Vance’s wife Usha had also volunteered during a recent “Fox & Friends” interview that her husband had a “dorky” streak — including an interest in Magic: The Gathering, the fantasy card game popularized in the 1990s. It was, Vance said when asked, a phase.

“The big problem with transitioning from being a 13-year-old who likes Magic: The Gathering to being a 15-year-old who likes Magic: The Gathering is that 15-year-old girls do not like Magic: The Gathering,” he said. “So I dropped it like a bad habit.”

That said, he did reveal his “embarrassing” favorite deck from his playing days.

“Yawgmoth’s Bargain,” he said.

• Semafor’s David Weigel interviewed Vance in 2022 about the origins of his repeated criticisms of Democrats who did not have biological children.
• CNN reviewed and fact checked Vance’s attacks on Walz’s military record, going into detail on Walz’s retirement from the National Guard and his comments on gun safety.