Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) had a friendly and generally light-hearted late night debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight, with only a brief mention of last week’s debate and much focus on his past as a high school teacher.
“I can come up with no greater compliment than this, but you seem to me like the kind of guy who cleans the lint out of the dryer after every use,” Kimmel said at the end of the segment.
There was only a brief mention of Walz’s debate last week against JD Vance. Kimmel asked him about the moment when he asked Vance whether he believed Donald Trump won the election. The GOP VP nominee wouldn’t answer.
“That should have been the lead, 85 minutes before,” Walz said.
Kimmel responded, “Yeah, it’s crazy, although you have to remember the last vice president who said he thought Trump lost the election would up being chased out of the Capitol building.”
Walz was in Los Angeles for the guest appearance, and earlier in the day toured the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Culver City to commemorate the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.
As Kimmel asked Walz about being a social studies teacher, he mentioned also supervising the lunch room.
“This is no good deed goes unpunished,” Walz said. “One of my first years there, I went over to the freshman table and they were getting kind of loud, and I’m like fellas, calm down. I look over and a kid has got milk coming out of his mouth and turning kind of blue. I look down and there is half a Polish dog there, and I realize he’s choking on the Polish dog. So I grabbed him … and I gave him the Heimlich and I popped the Polish dog across the room. I got lunchroom duty every year after that.”
Walz also talked about missing Kamala Harris’ phone call when she wanted to contact him to be her running mate. He thought it was a junk call. “I’m thinking it’s like a car warranty thing or whatever.”
He said he’s since listed Harris as “my dry cleaner” on his phone. “You come up with something.”
Walz did talk about some issues, including the epidemic of school shootings, including proposal to arm teachers.
“That is a very. very bad idea,” he said.
“You can pass common sense things and not infringe on the Second Amendment,” he said.
At one moment, Kimmel caught Walz when he talked about winning the election. “I plan on waking up on November 6 with Madam President.”
The audience cheered.
“I just want to be clear with you that you won’t be waking up together, unless you guys have gotten closer than we thought,” Kimmel quipped.
Walz responded, “I have a problem with not being specific about everything.”
