During an interview with Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” on Monday, 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) responded to campaign ads from Republicans criticizing Democrats over their positions on allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports by stating that they “figured out early, fear is a great short-term motivator.”
After Walz talked about the economy and manufacturing, host Jon Stewart said, “It’s interesting, if I judge it from — and, again, New York’s not a swing state — but we see the commercials, we’re inundated with the commercials as well, mostly for down-ballot races and things like that. But if I were to look at this as an alien stepping into this election, just from the commercials, I would think that Republicans vote on two things: Stopping people from coming over the border and stopping trans people from playing sports. Like, those are the only two commercials that I’ve seen. And the Democrats, oddly enough, run on two things as well: Stopping people coming in from the border — they’ve accepted it, like, all the Democrats that are running for Congress and for other offices here in New York, all talk about the border — and then choice legislation. And you would think those are the only two things that are going on that anybody is talking about. So, it’s interesting to hear that, one-to-one, it’s more economy.”
Walz responded, “Well, they ask people to rank the issues where they’re at, depending on where you rank it, and look, these guys figured out early, fear is a great short-term motivator. I often say I supervised a high school lunchroom, I know fear works. It doesn’t — but it doesn’t change behaviors. And I still believe that there’s this aspirational piece and really listening to where people are at. In small towns, these are not hateful people, but they’re wondering, where did their manufacturing jobs go? Well, Donald Trump shipped them overseas. … We need to make sure we’re making the case that, look, here’s how this is going to specifically impact you. We hear you about this.”
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