When pro-abort, pro-genital mutilation, and cowardly Minnesota Governor Tim Walz accepted Kamala Harris's offer to be her running mate, he made an interesting comment. On the subject of a possible debate with Trump's vice president candidate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, Walz said:

And I got to tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy.  (Applause.)  That is if — if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up, so — (laughter).  You see what I did there?

If you don't know what Walz is talking about, it is a slanderous, 100% made-up story about Vance that circulated on social media. Business Insider unmasked the guy behind it and interviewed him. As if to increase the spread of the false story to terminally online people, the AP did a now-deleted fact-check of the story.

Walz used his first campaign appearance to deliberately spread a lie about JD Vance, but no one in the media called him out.

Wednesday, a major Kamala surrogate, Minnesota Senator Tina Smith, was a guest on little-watched CNN hosted by the incomparable Jim Acosta. (By the way, she totally has the cat lady vibe going despite being married and having kids).

Read my colleague Bonchie's Top Harris Surrogate's Claim About Vance's Military Service Is So Disgusting Jim Acosta Has to Jump In for all the details, but this is how the exchange went.

SMITH: Well, here is Tim Walz who enlisted when he was 17 years old. He served in the National Guard for 24 years, and I'm not aware of any military service that JD Vance has ever served so let's just make the comparison there. 

And, what happened in the tragedy of the killing of George Floyd and then the unrest..

ACOSTA: Well, he was in the Marines, but...

SMITH: Yeah, okay. Pardon me for that.

This is not a slip of the tongue. Smith serves with Vance in the Senate. She has to be familiar with his life story. This was an attempt to set a narrative with CNN's native demographic of low-functioning midwits. Note how reluctant Acosta is to upset the apple cart.

Taken together, these two things indicate that Donald Trump and JD Vance are facing opponents who will casually tell the most extravagant lies and stoop to the worst kind of slanderous comments because they know their audience doesn't care and they have no fear of being challenged by the media.