Minnesota Governor Tim Walz made his first appearance as Harris’ running mate, launching a fierce attack on former President Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance.
“I just can’t help but say this, and you all know it, you all feel it, these people are creepy and, yeah, they’re just freaking weird, and that’s what you see,” Waltz said to thunderous applause from Philadelphia rally-goers, using a newly popular phrase to describe the Trump campaign as “weird.”
“If Trump has a chance to come back, he will pick up where he left off four years ago, except this time it will be much worse,” Walz said, arguing that the Republican candidate would repeal Obamacare, eviscerate Social Security and Medicare and ban abortion nationwide.
“My dad never sat at the kitchen table worrying about how to pay the bills like he did when I was growing up. He never sat at Mar-a-Lago country club worrying about how to reduce his rich friends’ taxes,” Waltz said.
The Minnesota governor then criticized Vance, his running mate, claiming that he shares Trump’s “dangerous and regressive policies for this country.”
“Just like any normal person I know who grew up in the Midwest, JD went to Yale, was funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best-selling book trashing that community. No kidding! That’s not where the Midwest is,” Waltz said, adding, “I can’t wait to debate him.”
Waltz won a fierce running mate race to join Harris on the Democratic presidential ticket just two weeks after President Biden made the historic decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (D), who offered glowing praise for both candidates at the start of a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, were also seen as front-runners.
Waltz’s political stardom has skyrocketed in the past week after a video went viral in which he called Republicans “wackos,” a moniker that other leading Democrats have adopted, instead of their earlier portrayal of Trump as an existential threat to democracy.
Harris formally won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, and the Harris-Waltz campaign is poised to face off against the Trump-Vance team this fall.
