Harris’ choice of Walz, 60, who is currently serving a second term as Minnesota governor, leaked to the news media Tuesday morning.
With the V.P. selection down to two or three names, Harris informed Walz of his selection via a video call, according to a CNN story. The two other potential running mates who got passed over are Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
Minnesota, where Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump 52%-46% in 2020, is a reliably blue state while Pennsylvania and 19 electoral votes is an important state for Trump and Kamala Harris. So the surprising choice of Walz kicked off speculation over why Shapiro (pictured below) was not chosen.
Reacting to the pick of Walz, CNN political commentator Van Jones summarized the views of many after Harris passed over Shapiro, who is Jewish. There needs to be discussion, Jones suggested, over whether that choice is “caving” to what Jones called “darker parts in the party.”
“You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot but there are anti-Jewish bigots out there,” Jones, speaking about the Democratic Party, said in the live CNN interview.
Gov. Walz, who is unknown to many voters, made headlines just last week after he praised socialism during a political call with Harris supporters. Taking his turn on the “White Dudes for Harris” fundraising call, the governor encouraged fellow Democrats to “make the case” for a Harris vote to their “angry” and “confused” neighbors.
“For one thing, don't ever shy away from our progressive values,” he said. “One person's socialism is another person's neighborliness.”
Socialism is a political system in which the government owns and controls most, if not all, property and resources that are redistributed to the population at the government’s discretion. So any “neighborliness” is at the whim of the authoritarian government that historically has enforced its centralized planning with mass surveillance, prison cells, and the barrel of a gun.
Walz is a member of the socialist DFL Party, or the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. That political party, which dates back to the 1940s, is Minnesota’s state version of the national Democratic Party.
Jan Markell, a Minnesotan who talks to AFN often about Israel and Judaism, says Harris has chosen a “Marxist radical” for her running mate.
“I think most of us consider both of them to be communists at heart,” she tells AFN.
Markell’s description of Gov. Walz differs wildly from much of the national media. Headlines posted Tuesday morning on the Drudge Report describe a former school teacher and a military veteran who will appeal to rural Americans like their “favorite uncle.”
Thanks to the reach of social media, especially X, voters are also seeing another view of "favorite uncle" Gov. Walz as the Harris-Walz ticket takes off. A video posted Tuesday morning by the Republican National Committee showed the Governor signing a bill to give illegal aliens driver's licenses. Another X clip reminded voters Gov. Walz signed a bill that put menstrual products in boys' school restrooms.
In another X post, Donald Trump replied to the news with two words: "Thank You!"
Walz refused to send National Guard
Markell, who lives in the Minneapolis area, says she has not forgotten how Gov. Walz let Minneapolis and St. Paul burn to the ground during the 2020 race riots after George Floyd’s death.
Walz was serving his first term as governor when protesters poured into the streets on May 26, 2020. Their numbers swelled and the protests quickly turned violent at night. Four days later, 25 people were dead and more than 1,500 buildings were damaged, burned, or looted.
A story and day-by-day timeline by the American Experiment website describes how Walz ignored pleas for help and refused to send the Minnesota National Guard to Minneapolis to help overwhelmed police officers who faced tens of thousands on the streets.
Walz, who is himself an Army National Guard veteran, ignored pleas for help from the city mayor and police chief over two days, the timeline states.
The city’s overwhelmed police department eventually abandoned its Third Precinct which was torched by rioters on the night of May 28.
The aroma of burning tires
The story and timeline also points out Hope Walz, the governor’s daughter, informed protesters the National Guard was not coming. In a social media post, she wrote “could someone who actually has followers [relay] to the masses that have gotten ‘national guard’ trending that the guard WILL NOT be present tonight??” A second related post made a more direct statement: "the national guard will not be present tonight."
In a related eye-opening post on X, published today, the Governor’s wife Gwen is telling an interviewer about her experience during the 2020 riots. She recalls keeping the windows open in their home, so she could smell burning tires, because that was a “touchstone” moment for her.
That X post was published by Dustin Grage, a Republican from Minnesota.
Vance ties Harris-Walz together
Soon after the Harris-Walz ticket was announced today, the Trump campaign was telling voters how that partnership is a unique one.
“They make an interesting tag team,” Sen. J.D. Vance told the media, “because Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, and the few that got caught, Kamala Harris helped bail them out of jail."
Vance was referring to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a radical group that provided cash bail for people arrested during the Twin Cities riots.
Harris was the vice presidential nominee when she publicly supported the fund in a Twitter post. She asked people to “chip in now” to help people “protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”
Her support for the bail fund came just four days after rioters had burned the Third Precinct to the ground.
