Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) recently slammed Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, over his views on rural America.
During an appearance on a Tuesday segment of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the governor criticized Vance for the way he characterized “small-town America” in his 2016 bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”
“People like JD Vance know nothing about small-town America,” said Walz, who was raised in rural Nebraska. “My town had 400 people in it, 24 kids in my graduating class — 12 were cousins.”
“And he gets it all wrong,” he continued. “It’s not about hate, it’s not about collapsing in. The golden rule there is mind your own damn business.”
Walz then said that the Republican Party has “destroyed rural America” through their policies.
“They’ve divided us. They’re in our exam rooms, they’re telling us what books to read,” he said. “And I think what Kamala Harris knows is, bringing people together around the shared values — strong public schools, strong labor unions that create the middle class, health care that’s affordable and accessible — those are the things.”
The Minnesota governor later emphasized his point that Republicans have created division, saying, “We can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner with our uncle, because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary.”
He added that right-wing politicians are running for the “he-man, women-haters club or something.”
“That angst that JD Vance talks about in ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ — none of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale, and none of them went on to be venture capitalists or whatever,” he later continued. “It’s not who people really are.”
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Vance, a Marine Corps veteran, attended Yale Law School and worked as a venture capitalist. His hit memoir elevated him to national fame, but he has also garnered criticism for some of the ways in which he portrayed the struggles of working-class people in rural America in the book.
Silas House, an author and chair of Appalachian Studies at Berea College in Kentucky, told People in an article published Wednesday that he believes the memoir “traffics in ugly stereotypes and tropes.”
Vance was raised by his grandparents in Middletown, Ohio, while his mother battled an addiction. His father left his family when he was a young child.
Critics have challenged Vance’s depiction of Appalachia, while others have questioned the extent of his Appalachian ties since he was raised in Ohio.
Vance’s grandparents are from Appalachia, and he spent time during his upbringing traveling to the region in Kentucky to visit family.
Neema Avashia, author of “Another Appalachia,” called out the book’s lack of representation of Appalachia’s residents of color in an interview with The Associated Press last week, adding that she thought the memoir made “sweeping generalizations” about working-class white people.
The book’s popularity is “rooted in a desire to have your biases confirmed,” she said.