JD Vance: Harris ‘Listened to the Hamas Wing of Her Own Party’ in Skipping Shapiro

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) said Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris “listened to the Hamas wing of her own party” in passing over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) in favor of Gov. Tim Walz (D) of Minnesota as her running mate.

Vance, whom former President Donald Trump tapped as his running mate last month, spoke to reporters shortly after Walz was announced as Harris’s pick. He said that he had called Walz to congratulate him, and had left a voice mail.

But he also said:

Obviously, the big news of the day is that Tim Walz has been nominated as the VP, or is now the presumptive nominee, I should say, for Kamala Harris. My view on it is it just highlights how radical Kamala Harris is. This is a person who listened to the Hamas wing of her own party in selecting a nominee. This is a guy who’s proposed shipping more manufacturing jobs to China,; who wants to make the American people more reliant on garbage energy, instead of good American energy; and has proposed defunding the police, just as Kamala Harris does. I think it’s interesting, actually — they make an interesting tag team, because of course Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, and then the few who got caught, Kamala Harris helped bail them out of jail. So it is more instructive for what it says about Kamala Harris, that she doesn’t care about the border, she doesn’t hear about crime, she doesn’t care about American energy, and most importantly, she doesn’t care about the Americans who have been made to suffer under those policies.

A reporter then asked Vance if he thought Harris declined to choose Shapiro because of antisemitism. (Shapiro is Jewish and his past pro-Israel views had drawn objections from anti-Israel activists within the party.)

He answered:

Well, it’s not what I believe; it’s what the Democratic leadership has said. Many, many people said repeatedly that the reason Kamala Harris was going away from the Josh Shapiro selection is because they were worried about antisemitism. They were worried about certain voters. They were worried about some of the leaders, and the grassroots activists in their party, wouldn’t take a Jewish nominee. i think it’s despicable. i think it’s disgusting, but that is right out of the words of many members of the Democratic leadership.

Vance correctly noted that many Jewish Democrats had publicly criticized their own party over the tone of objections to Shapiro. In the aftermath of Walz’s selection, many suspected that Harris had bowed to antisemitism in the party:

Adding insult to injury, Harris will introduce Walz as her running mate Tuesday in Shapiro’s home city and state — in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It had been known for days that she would make the announcement there, leading to the conclusion that Shapiro had been the favorite — and making Walz’s selection even more striking to political observers.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.