MSNBC compares JD Vance's 'embarrassing' doughnut order to Tim Walz's at a sandwich shop: 'He suffers from vicarious embarrassment'

Tim Walz gave a master class in campaign stops at local restaurants when he visited a Runza in Nebraska earlier this week, MSNBC host Alex Wagner and analyst Tim Miller explained. This was a stark contrast to JD Vance's visit to the doughnut shop on Thursday. As Miller (of the conservative anti-Trump magazine Bulwark) put it, “I just suffered vicarious shame for JD.”

“He's an uncomfortable guy,” Miller continued, speaking of the Republican vice presidential candidate. “And I think that the choice of Walz, you know, just represents this striking contrast when it comes to who can authentically speak to the concerns of working people.”

“JD Vance is like that election where Donald Trump's son told him, 'This guy is really good with blue-collar people. They like him. He wrote this book,'” Miller said, referring to Vance's successful memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” “The reality was that at the time, it was mostly New York liberals who read JD Vance's book. It wasn't blue-collar people.”

Vance's oddball doughnut shop in Georgia went viral as social media users gawked at his stiff interactions with the shop's employees. He was in Valdosta, Georgia, for a campaign rally when he decided to visit Holt's Sweet Shop. In a video of the visit, a woman behind the counter tells Vance she doesn't want to be filmed, prompting Vance to instruct members of the media to “just cut her out of everything.” While some did, the woman was seen in the original C-SPAN clip that was shared online.

Then he said, “I'm JD Vance. I'm running for vice president.” The woman just replied, “OK.”

The Democratic vice presidential candidate's visit to Runza was strikingly different. Walz and his wife, Gwen, arrived at the restaurant last weekend and immediately apologized for “holding things up.”

“We actually just came here to go to Runza and then we had a little rally on the side,” the Minnesota governor joked to the smiling staff before shaking hands with a cashier who said, “I'm such a fan.”

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

Such interactions “do not come naturally” to Vance, Miller said. “It is not his nature. And that's why I think that with Walz on the ballot, this falseness and this failure to be an authentic representative of working people is even more apparent.”

As X-user Conor Rogers noted, Vance's experience at the doughnut shop was evidence of poor work by his campaign's advance team in the lead-up to 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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