Donald Trump and his allies moved quickly Tuesday to define Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, casting Vice President Kamala Harris’ new running mate as an agent of the far left.
Walz, the Trump campaign posited in a list of talking points obtained by NBC News, rounds out a “team of radicals.” Dave McCormick, the Trump-backed Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, branded Harris-Walz as “the most liberal presidential ticket in history.” Others took similar tacks.
It’s a messaging playbook that would not have worked so cleanly against the Democrat many Republicans feared Harris would pick: Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Even before President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Harris as his successor, GOP insiders had envisioned a Harris-Shapiro partnership, and the calculations factored into Trump choosing Sen. JD Vance of neighboring Ohio as a Rust Belt-reinforcing running mate.
“Instead of picking the candidate with charisma and a moderate record, Kamala caved to the Hamas caucus and picked a charisma black hole with a long record of supporting extreme liberal policies and a history of being close to China,” said a source close to the Trump campaign, who requested anonymity to share candid thoughts and specifically noted left-wing scrutiny over Shapiro’s record on Israel and denunciations of pro-Palestinian protesters.
A top Trump adviser added: “Hamas Harris bent the knee to anti-semitic, anti-Israel radicals on the left by leapfrogging Shapiro. She chose someone as dangerously liberal as she is.”
In a late morning post on Truth Social, Trump seemed jubilant, although it was not immediately clear whether his two-word message was responding directly to the news that Harris had picked Walz.
“THANK YOU!” the former president wrote.
Other reaction in Trump world and the party at large was similarly a mix of relief and disbelief, with GOP consultants asserting that it’s much easier to frame a Harris-Walz ticket as far left than it would have been had Harris selected Shapiro, who leads a crucial swing state.
“She outsmarted herself,” said Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican operative and veteran of presidential campaigns who is not working for the Trump campaign. “Popular and charismatic governor in a must-win state was sitting right there. Passing him by, I just don’t understand.”
Another GOP strategist, Zack Roday, called Harris’ pick “a total flop.”
“Thought [Walz] was a helpful person to have in the mix for energy for progressives,” Roday, who is not working with the campaign, added. “Did not believe she would actually pull the lever. It will reinforce her San Francisco liberal bonafides. Didn’t realize that needed to be lifted up.”
Vance, speaking to reporters in Philadelphia before an event meant to draw attention from Walz’s official debut as Harris’ running mate in the city later Tuesday, said he had left the governor a congratulatory voicemail. Asked if he believed that concerns about antisemitism steered Harris away from choosing Shapiro, who is Jewish, Vance deferred to Democrats.
“Well it’s not what I believe,” Vance said. “Many, many people said repeatedly that the reason Kamala Harris was going away from the Josh Shapiro selection is because they were worried about anti-semitism. They were worried about certain voters. They were worried [that] some of the leaders and the grassroots activists in their party wouldn’t take a Jewish nominee. I think it’s despicable.”
Later, during his remarks at a sports and entertainment arena, Vance offered more pointed critiques of Walz.
“The biggest problem with Tim Walz … is what it says about Kamala Harris — that when given an opportunity, she will bend the knee to the most radical elements of her party,” Vance said. “That’s exactly what she did here. That’s what she’s going to keep on doing as president.”
Harris, for her part, portrayed Walz as a fighter for the middle class.
“It’s personal,” Harris wrote in a statement. “As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his own. We are going to build a great partnership. We start out as underdogs but I believe together, we can win this election.”
The Trump campaign, in a statement shortly after word of Walz’s selection tricked out, unleashed the first of several statements characterizing the ticket as a double dose of liberalism.
“It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate — Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement that also resurfaced 2017 remarks in which Walz observed that rural Minnesota was “mostly rocks and cows.” “While Walz pretends to support Americans in the Heartland, when the cameras are off, he believes that rural America is ‘mostly cows and rocks.’”
The campaign also released a 30-second video branding Harris and Walz as “failed, weak and dangerously liberal.”
Trump’s campaign had long been gathering research on Harris’ potential running mates, and its dossier of talking points paints Walz as far left on nearly every position of consequence.
“To her credit, Kamala Harris put policy over politics by picking a radical liberal,” Taylor Budowich, the CEO for the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. super PAC, said.
Republicans plan to attack Walz as weak on immigration, in part because of his support for sanctuary cities and openness to make Minnesota a sanctuary state. Trump’s team also is likely to highlight Walz’s recent interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, in which the governor joked about investing in a “ladder factory” that builds ladders higher than any Trump-constructed border wall. Walz’s point was that a border wall on its own won’t solve the immigration issue.
“You stop this using electronics, you stop this using more border control, and you stop it by having a legal system that allows for that tradition of allowing folks to come here just like my relatives did, to come here be able to work and establish the American dream,” Walz said.
Crime and public safety will be another attack line. The Trump campaign’s messaging will touch on a 21% increase in Minnesota’s violent crime rate in 2021, Walz’s third year in office. Since that 2021 increase, however, Minnesota’s overall crime rate has dropped to modern day lows.
And Walz’s handling of the protests and riots after the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis are likely to be another flashpoint. A police precinct was burned down during the unrest in Minneapolis. Walz’s administration put damage estimates at $500 million.
“They make an interesting tag team because, of course, Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, and then, the few who got caught, Kamala Harris helped bail them out of jail,” Vance, alluding to Harris’ social media push to raise money for a bail fund meant to benefit the protesters, told reporters Tuesday.
Darren Beattie, a former Trump speech writer, wrote in a post on X that it was “amazing” that Harris picked Walz over “the Arizona astronaut,” referring to Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, and “the Jewish guy from PA,” referring to Shapiro.
The source close to the Trump campaign likened Harris’ choice to the one made eight years ago by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who ran with Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
“Walz is Tim Kaine all over again,” this person predicted. He adds nothing to the ticket.”
