Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
Before this week, the majority of Americans, regardless of their political leaning, would have had a hard time telling you who Tim Walz was if the Minnesota governor stood before them wearing a shirt with his name and title.
At first glance, he appears to be about as exciting and noteworthy as a brown cow in a Texas field, an impression the Harris campaign hopes will take root as Walz is meant to appeal to the middle.
However, the Trump campaign says Walz is far from the political version of plain white toast. Indeed, the campaign argues he is a dish that will prove unpalatable to the traditionalist crowd.
“By picking Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala Harris not only bent the knee to the radical left, she doubled down on her dangerously liberal, weak, and failed agenda,” Brian Hughes, Trump Campaign Senior Advisor, said in a statement Tuesday. “Walz would be a rubberstamp for Kamala to wage war on American energy, continue aiding and abetting an invasion on our border, and embolden our adversaries as the world is brought to the brink of World War III.”
To be sure, Republicans have as much of a vested interest in proving Walz is an arch-progressive as Democrats have in proving he’s a “Midwestern dad”, a term being floated through legacy media.
But what does Walz’s record say? Is he closer to the lunatic leftist or heartwarming sitcom parent that he’s being simultaneously portrayed as?
The short answer is that his record shows a person who has moved leftward over time, but just what that means depends on who you ask and when you ask them.
For starters, Walz has done himself no favors. Speaking on a call with “White Dudes for Harris”, he equated socialism to being a good neighbor.
“Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values,” Walz said. “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”
Perhaps Walz feels safe in making the statement. It didn’t hurt Barack Obama when Joe Biden equated paying exorbitant taxes to being patriotic.
It would be wholly dishonest to say Walz has no equity with the right.
To the extent that anyone knew about Walz outside of his home state, it was in relation to his handling of the George Floyd protests.
In 2020, Walz took 18 hours to activate the state’s National Guard after the mayor of Minneapolis requested that he do so to help quell what the left defined as mostly peaceful protests. Walz’s response was certainly something to behold once it began. Thousands of troops were activated and had their effect.
It is hard to make concrete statements about the 18-hour window. Then-President Donald Trump praised Walz for calling “up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast it was like bowling pins.”
Democrats this week have seized on those kind words, a move that forced the Trump campaign to say those kind words (and more like them) about Walz were not an endorsement of the speed in which Walz acted, but that he ultimately acted on advice from President Trump.
“Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days, despite President Trump’s offer to deploy soldiers and cries for help from the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to ABC News. “In this daily briefing phone call with Governors on June 1, days after the riots began, President Trump acknowledged Governor Walz for FINALLY taking action to deploy the National Guard to end the violence in the city.”
PRO-TRANS AND PRO-ABORTION
Two issues on which Walz is unequivocally to the left – which is hardly a surprise as Kamala Harris is campaigning on being the farthest left candidate in U.S. history on these same topics – are abortion and transgenderism.
As governor, Walz was instrumental in Minnesota enacting what Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America calls the most liberal abortion policy in the nation.
“Last year Walz signed the ‘PRO Act,’ which was at the time the country’s most extreme law enshrining abortion on demand throughout pregnancy as a ‘fundamental right’ without limits of any kind,” BA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “He then signed further legislation grossly expanding taxpayer-funded abortion, stripping away the state’s informed consent protections, and significantly weakening protections for babies born alive.”
The National Review’s Dan McLaughlin went a step further, writing in an article that Walz signed a law that made it legal to “coerce” women into abortions.
When it comes to transgender issues, Walz has a lengthy track record of being permissive in terms of allowing children to choose a gender.
The Daily Wire recently uncovered a video from 2017 in which Walz said that children as young as 10 should be allowed to go into any restroom they wish.
“These are children my son’s age, a fourth grader, a 10-year-old who, just wants to go to the bathroom … and their identity is male or female and they just go in that bathroom and use it,” Walz said at the time.
Walz has since signed into law a bill that allows the state to seize custody of children whose parents will not okay gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone treatments.
OF JOKES AND HYPERBOLE
To the delight of internet comedians, Walz also okayed a law that requires tampons to be made available in boys’ and girls’ restrooms at state schools. It’s a move that has earned him the nickname “Tampon Tim” on the right.
“As a woman, I think there is no greater threat to our health than leaders who support gender-transition surgeries for young minors, who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools,” Leavitt said this week on Fox News. “Those are radical policies that Tim Walz supports. He actually signed a bill to do that.”
Even noted satire site The Babylon Bee got in on the fun, posting an article jokingly accusing Walz of kicking in stall doors at a Minneapolis middle school to offer boys a tampon.
If it makes Walz feel any better, Trump running mate JD Vance has been accused of having had improper relations with a piece of furniture, a joke Walz has made at Vance’s expense during at least one campaign stop.
MILITARY RECORD A HUGE ISSUE
That Walz has overstated his military record is unavoidable.
Per the Daily Wire, he once falsely claimed to have retired as a sergeant major from the National Guard. In reality, Walz served briefly as a sergeant major, having been promoted on condition of meeting certain standards. When he left the service without satisfying those requirements, his rank went to master sergeant.
Equally troubling, the Daily Wire also found multiple examples of Walz overstating the role he played in Operation Enduring Freedom, specifically suggesting he deployed and saw combat.
Walz served during wartime, but he never saw combat. Indeed, Republicans have accused him of unceremoniously opting out of going to Iraq when his unit was activated.
“As a Marine who served his country in uniform when the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably,” Vance said. “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him, a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with.”
PRO-GREEN, PRO-MIGRANT, PRO-LOCKDOWN, PRO-VIDED SELF WITH CAR AFTER DRINKING
Walz’s other stances are interesting, although not entirely surprising.
In 2020, he went the route of so many Democrat governors and backed stricter lockdowns, citing public health.
Walz supports a more liberal approach to immigration. He is certainly no fan of a great wall along the U.S. southern border, promising to invest in a company that makes 30-foot ladders if Trump’s 25-foot wall is completed.
In terms of environmental matters, Walz has been heralded by The Guardian as a climate champion celebrated by green activists.
What is more striking than Walz’s stances, and even more remarkable than his odd choice of phrases, is that he is no stranger to legal trouble.
He got a DUI in 1995, a fact that would ordinarily be brushed off as a mistake that one should be allowed to overcome. But, since Democrats routinely trot out driving while impaired as reason enough to oust Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, one would assume leftists will demand an explanation.
More recently, Walz has come under scrutiny for the wrongdoing perpetrated by others while during his time as governor.
Earlier this year, Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor said Walz’s Department of Education had failed to prevent or respond to a $250 million fraud perpetrated by some 70 individuals who have been charged with bilking the federal government out of money meant for feeding hungry kids during the pandemic.