I don't think Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz stands much of a chance of being tapped as Kamala Harris's running mate, but the Democrat certainly appeared to be auditioning for the role in a CNN appearance on Tuesday night. 

In an interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, Walz bragged about his shooting skills, while offering a word salad in support of gun control. 

“That’s what JD Vance’s stick is, talking about guns. I guarantee you he can’t shoot pheasants like I can,” Walz said Tuesday on “Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees.” 

“And that’s a part of saying, but you know what, I guarantee I don’t want weapons of war in classrooms. And there’s no reason that you can’t have reasonable restrictions around that without infringing on your Second Amendment,” he added.

As you might expect, Walz's weird pivot from pheasant hunting to "weapons of war in the classroom" didn't get any pushback from Anderson Cooper, who allowed the governor to continue his rambling monologue without any interjection from the anchor. To the best of my knowledge, no state authorizes school employees to carry machine guns or other weapons used by the military in classrooms. A majority of states do provide for armed school staff to carry or have access to a concealed handgun with the authorization of a school board or superintendent, but only after these volunteers have been vetted and trained. 

I've never seen Walz hunting pheasants, so I have no idea if he's as good as he claims. Frankly, I don't care how many birds he can bag on any given outing. I do care about his stance on the right to keep and bear arms, and given his ham-handed attempt to go after J.D. Vance on Second Amendment issues, Anderson Cooper should have drilled down and asked him a) what on earth he was talking about and b) to give an example of a gun control law that Walz believes would violate the Second Amendment. . 

In fact, I'd argue Cooper could and should have pressed Walz on Minnesota's ban on concealed carry for adults younger than 21 as well, given that it was recently ruled unconstitutional by a three-judge panel on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced earlier on Tuesday that he was seeking an en banc review from the entire Eighth Circuit, so asking Walz if he belives that prohibiting young adults from exercising their right to bear arms is constitutional would have been a natural question. Instead, Cooper let Walz ramble on before asking him what he thought about some of Donald Trump's recent comments at a campaign stop in Minnesota. 

"I've dealt with bullies. I had 20 years in the classroom. This is about making sure you take away this perceived power he has." Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz talks to Anderson about why the "weird" label is sticking to Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/4zg3MEfxJA

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) July 31, 2024

It's pretty telling that Cooper chose to spend most of the segment talking up Walz's use of the word "weird" to describe Trump rather than, you know, any actual policy. The same media that has treated the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 as Donald Trump's policy agenda doesn't want to talk much at all about where Kamala Harris or her campaign surrogates stand on issues. That would mean acknowledging that Harris is changing her tune on things like a mandatory "buyback" of so-called assault weapons, fracking, "universal" health care, and other policies that were major components of her brief bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. But it would also mean giving viewers the facts about where Harris claims to stand now, and it's pretty obvious that Harris's supporters, including those in the media, are trying to make the election a contrast in personalities, at least for the moment.