MSNBC Compares JD Vance’s ‘Awkward’ Donut Order With Tim Walz at a Sandwich Shop: ‘Suffering from Vicarious Embarrassment’

Tim Walz gave a masterclass in local restaurant campaign stops when he visited a Runza in Nebraska earlier this week, MSNBC anchor Alex Wagner and analyst Tim Miller explained. This was a stark contrast with J.D. Vance’s donut shop visit Thursday. As Miller (of anti-Trump conservative outlet the Bulwark) put it, “I was just suffering from vicarious embarrassment for J.D.”

“He’s an uncomfortable guy,” Miller continued as he discussed the Republican vice presidential candidate. “And I think that the Walz pick, you know, just provides this striking contrast when it comes to who can authentically speak to working people’s concerns.”

“J.D. Vance is like this pick where Donald Trump’s kid told him, he’s like, ‘This guy’s really good with working people. They like him. He wrote that book,’” Miller said, referencing Vance’s hit memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” “The reality was, it was mostly like New York liberals that read J.D. Vance’s book back in the day. It wasn’t working-class people.”

Vance’s awkward donut shop in Georgia went viral as social media users gawked at his stiff interactions with the store’s employees. He was in Valdosta, Georgia, for a campaign event when he made the decision to visit Holt’s Sweet Shop. In video of the visit, a woman behind the counter tells Vance she doesn’t want to be recorded, to which Vance instructed members of the media to “just cut her out of anything.” While some did, the original clip from C-SPAN that spread online included the woman.

He then said, “I’m J.D. Vance. I’m running for vice president.” The woman replied simply, “OK.”

The Democratic vice presidential candidate’s visit to Runza was strikingly different. Walz and his wife Gwen stopped by the restaurant last weekend and were immediately apologetic for “holding things up for ya.”

“We really came just to go to Runza, and then we did a little rally on the side,” the Minnesota governor quipped with the smiling staff before shaking hands with a cashier who said, “I’m such a fan.”

Liberal media watchdog outlet MeidasTouch offered a side-by-side of Vance and Walz’s fast food interactions:

These kinds of interactions are “not natural” for Vance, Miller said. “It doesn’t come naturally to him. And so I think that with Walz on the ticket, that fakeness and that failure to be an authentic representative of working people has really been accentuated.”

As X user Conor Rogers noted, Vance’s donut shop experience represented poor work by his campaign’s advance team ahead of his visit.

You can watch the MSNBC discussion between Alex Wagner and Tim Miller in the video at the top of this story.

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