Here’s the latest right wing attack on Walz that’s going to fall just as flat as the rest of them. If you didn’t think they had enough things to sit around spewing phony outrage over, here’s the crew on this Friday’s Outnumbered having a hissy fit over the Harris/Walz campaign selling camouflage hats, and pretending Trump’s cult of MAGAts are the only ones who hunt in the United States, or that like camo.
CAMPAGNO: Well, the Harris/Walz campaign just launched this camo hat, possibly trying to win over Trump supporters, but instead, it’s becoming a status symbol for liberals with nearly $2 million in sales already.
That may have something to do with how much it looks like pop star Chappell Roan’s Midwest Princess hats. She even posted about the similarity on social media, writing, “Is this real?” Is this real, Joey?
JONES: Just real quick, so I know that pattern is called Realtree and the guys that own it are Georgians, they’re good buddies of mine, and they had no part in this hat becoming a part of the Harris/Walz campaign.
They just want to support sportsmen. I think they lean right anyway, and it’s been tough because they’ve gotten a lot of hate over it, and they shouldn’t. Listen, it’s a free market country. They put these blanks out to a vendor, and the vendor decided to sell them. It takes more than a hat to embrace a culture of blue collar and hard work, and I just hope they understand that.
CAMPAGNO: Amen. Kayleigh?
MCENANY: Yeah, my husband saw this hat, and I don’t think he’d mind if I quoted him.
He said, not a single person who ends up wearing this hat is going to embody the type of voter they’re trying to get.
JONES: Exactly right.
MCENANY: You know, this is the hunter, this is someone who loves the land. This is someone who leans conservative, perhaps blue collar leaning.
They’re not going to buy into the Harris/Walz agenda. It’s going to take more than a camo hat to win them over. It’s going to take a good message, and the Walz folksy, I was a teacher, and so on and so forth, I just don’t think they’re going to buy it, but we’ll see.
Cheryl, it reminds me of a photo op, right?
CAMPAGNO: When you see, for example, one of those office studios, you know, politicians traipsing through the woods to make some type of statement, and he just looks so awkward and out of place. So go ahead and try, but the authenticity fails.
CASONE: Well, it’s always what they’re doing, and they’re going for the Rust Belt. And, this election’s going to come down to a small handful of states, and they’re making every effort that they can to entice those voters.
I don’t think a hat is going to work to the point that’s already been made. At the same time, hey, money-making opportunity, you make some cash off of it. I can’t really hate on them for that. I mean, you know. Make a buck.
[crosstalk]
BANDARES: Putting camo and orange together would make a great purse, I love that combo. But this actually, Joey has actually sent me pictures while he’s out hunting and it actually reminds me of one of that. You were actually killing birds.
But this is actually the hat that’s being worn by liberals who want to take away your guns, when this is a hunting hat.
JONES: And then they want to stop you from accessing public land to hunt they want just for the Ariat crowd. So, there’s some there’s some meat there that makes this a….
BANDARES: It’s fake. It’s just fake.
MCENANY: The Trump campaign has one too.
[crosstalk]
CAMPAGNO: It reminds me, remember when apparently waving the American flag was considered offensive, was even threatening, remember, pickup trucks, remember? We covered that extensively from the main stream media. So all of a sudden it seems like this symbol is all of the sudden not only okay, but it’s…
BANDARES: Also, Trump’s red hat has a message. What is the message there? There’s no message. it’s just their last names. I thought it was weak. Yeah, very pandering.
This coming from the same propaganda channel that has no problem with Trump selling gold tennis shoes and talking about how those shoes and him being a convict is going to make Black people love him.
Myke Cole at Slate has a great article discussing how the right is going to attempt to come after Walz on the gun issue, and why it’s going to fail just like these clowns did here.
Their big problem is that there’s nothing phony about Walz, and his views on guns and how they’ve evolved, and the people out of touch with middle America are the NRA and their enablers, and not Walz.
Fudds of America, Unite:
The GOP is already trying to wreck Tim Walz’s image as a gun guy. That’s OK.
Earlier this week, newly internet-beloved Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was wearing a camo hat when he accepted Kamala Harris’ phone call asking him to join her on the presidential ticket. On Wednesday, the Harris campaign said that $1 million worth of “Harris/Walz”–logoed camo hats—looking very similar to a “Midwest Princess” cap sold by singer Chappell Roan—had been purchased. The popularity of the hat gestures toward Walz’s image as a Guy Who Shoots Guns. In her introduction of her running mate, Harris mentioned that Walz repeatedly won the congressional sharpshooting contest; he’s taken a dig at the Republican VP candidate, J.D. Vance, in a quip that doubles as a reminder that Walz routinely goes pheasant hunting in the state where he serves as governor.
For onlookers not as familiar with the internal politics of gun ownership, who hear that the governor served more than two decades in the National Guard, “Walz is a gun guy” may seem like an obvious bona fide to add to his list of Midwestern dad attributes (hot dish fan, turkey observer, state fair attendee). But as demonstrated by Vance’s new “stolen valor” line of attack against Walz, debuted on Wednesday, the GOP will try to poke holes in this image any way it can. At the time of this writing, these holes appear to be small at best, but we are in the early days of a fight that could be as protracted as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign targeting John Kerry’s record in 2004.
[…]
I don’t think so. In picking Walz, the Harris team’s gun policy wonks are likely making a bet on something I have long suspected: that despite the shrieking of 2A’s lunatic fringe, most gun owners in America are Fudds. No study exists (indeed, the criteria haven’t been established) to grade America’s gun enthusiasts from 1 to 10 on a scientific Fudd scale. But there are hints that Fudds of Walz’s stripe form a group evocative of Nixon’s “silent majority”—we’re here, there’s a lot of us, and we don’t sound off on social media because it’s exhausting and occasionally dangerous.
The yakkers at Fox are the ones out of touch with most of the American public, and Democrats aren’t trying to take everyone in America’s guns away. They’d like to keep guns out of the hands of people who can’t pass a background check and with mental problems, and they’d like to keep weapons of war out of everyone’s hands, but they don’t want to stop people from hunting.
I look forward to watching what happens if this topic comes up when and if Walz and Vance debate.
