Say goodbye to “When they go low, we go high.” Or maybe it’s good riddance.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz took a moment during his first stump speech as the Democrats’ official VP pick on Tuesday to dunk on JD Vance, his counterpart on the Republican ticket. It was the kind of dunk that shatters backboards.
First, he accused his opponent of being an elitist who wrote a best-selling memoir trashing the Rust Belt community he grew up in; then, he went for the kill-shot: a winking nod to the pesky, patently false internet rumor that Vance once got it on with his futon.
“I can’t wait to debate him,” Walz said, letting a raucous round of applause play out before adding, “If he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
It was a brazen move for Walz’s formal introduction as an undercard on the Democratic ticket. It was also perfectly in keeping with Walz’s image as a straight shooter and the tone of this election.
Some political pundits did not see it that way, of course.
On the platform formerly known as Twitter, several prominent conservatives accused Walz of either hitting below the belt or spreading disinformation.
It wasn’t just writers from more openly partisan outlets like the National Review making such claims either. The New York Times’ coverage of the Philadelphia rally describes the couch joke as “a cheeky reference to a false online rumor that could open Walz up to criticism at a moment when the Harris campaign is working hard to fight disinformation.”
Juxtaposing Walz’s line with the sludge of actual disinformation polluting this election presents readers with a false binary. Not every single word a candidate utters on the stump falls neatly into the buckets, Truth and Lies. Jokes and “cheeky references” are fair play, too, especially those as innocuous-sounding as this one.
That’s the brilliance of Walz’s jibe: For anyone online enough to get the allusion, it’s hilariously daring; for anyone blissfully unaware of the goofy goings-on in the Twittersphere, the line just sounded like generic taunting.
It’s not as if Walz painstakingly explained the rumor and mused about whether it might perhaps be true. Nothing about the way he honked on that playful dog whistle assumes its veracity. Nor did many people listening likely take it that way. While some overly credulous folks may actually believe the couch thing, a vast swatch of native internet dwellers understand it to be a joke in the vein of “Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer.” For anyone worried about those who don’t process it that way, fret not: There are about a million explainers online clarifying that it’s just a joke. The only reason it’s found any purchase, let alone multi-week longevity, is because a lot of people simply don’t like Vance and find it amusing to share a juvenile rumor about him. Alluding to the rumor’s existence isn’t spreading disinfo—it’s just reveling in Vance’s apparent unlikability.
What might actually be disinformation, though, is conservative author Jonathan Turley’s claim that Walz followed up the couch reference by saying, “he really did that,” which is quite observably false. Now, if Walz had concocted the couch rumor right there onstage for the first time, that would be closer to disinformation. It’s not easy to invent rumors, though, as Walz’s detractors are demonstrating right now.
From the moment Walz’s joke began to spread on Tuesday evening, ferociously online conservatives attempted to retaliate by making up perverse rumors of their own. (Content warning: These are grosser than the JD Vance couch rumor.)
It’s bizarre for anyone on the right to take a “Two can play at that game” attitude about mildly lurid jokes, though, when the MAGA movement has spent the past few years gleefully painting their opponents as pedophiles and groomers. Why should it be shocking in our current cultural climate for someone on the Democratic ticket to—gasp—be a little bit mean? Donald Trump’s entire political career practically hinges on the fact that he is often “funnily” mean when attacking his opponents, in a way that deepens his connection with his supporters.
Why is that a weapon only one side is allowed to wield?
Using a dash of funny meanness doesn’t automatically make a politician like Walz more Trump-like. It would only be a Trumpian use of that weapon if Walz acted aggressively mean, say, by mocking someone’s disability for laughs. Walz’s joke should only be norm-shattering for anyone who has lived in a cave for the past nine years, or anyone who holds only one side to bygone rules.
But Walz’s insult isn’t even breaking traditional rules. There’s a long, rich history of running mates functioning as attack dogs on the campaign trail, saying the stuff a future president might not dare. The couch riff may be a bit spicier than some of its forebears, but it’s not as if Harris herself made the joke. That moment at Tuesday’s rally indicates that she might just let Walz churn out zesty zingers for the duration while she hovers above the fray.
Meanwhile, Trump is adhering to his own personal tradition of almost exclusively firing off vicious insults at those who have displeased him. Anyone looking for actual slander on the campaign trail need look no further than Trump falsely claiming last week, at an event for Black journalists, that Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black” in recent years for political gain.
However, this is one area where Harris did take Michelle Obama’s famous advice and went high, not bothering to give that blatant, ugly lie any legitimacy by defending against it.
When dealing with such insidious insults, it’s perfectly reasonable for Harris to permit her running mate to go low, sifting for insults beneath the couch cushions.