The Washington Post, clearly delighted with Vice President Kamala Harris’s choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as a running mate, published an article on Wednesday morning titled, “‘Bringing back the joy’: Walz’s first day keeps Democrats’ buzz going.” The selection of Walz, according to the authors, “gave Democrats a second burst of energy after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign.”
While the Post’s claim that Walz’s enthusiastic reception on Tuesday means the Harris honeymoon will continue is open for debate, it can’t be denied that his second day on the trail was a disaster.
Talk of Walz’s stolen valor dominated the airwaves on Wednesday. If there’s one thing Americans, particularly those with military connections, won’t tolerate, it’s when people embellish or lie about their military service.
As the uproar over Walz’s military service reached a fever pitch on Wednesday evening, Professor Jacobson conducted a flash poll among our readers. He asked: “Will Tim Walz Make It To Convention As ‘Stolen Valor’ Scandal Grows?” As of Thursday afternoon, 66% of readers believe he will, while 34% think he will be replaced before the convention.
While the revelations about Walz’s military service were embarrassing, he will likely survive this. He’s a Democrat, after all. And although I wouldn’t put anything past the Democrats, the optics of sacking their newly minted vice presidential pick so soon after forcing President Joe Biden to withdraw from the nomination would be terrible.
There’s also no guarantee that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro would accept the position after having been previously passed over. In fact, he may not have been too keen on becoming Harris’s running mate in the first place.
Sources “involved with the vetting process” told Politico on Tuesday that Sunday’s one-on-one meeting between Shapiro and Harris at the Naval Observatory did not go particularly well. According to the sources, after the meeting, “Shapiro called Harris’s team and made clear that he was struggling with the decision to leave his current job as governor in order to seek the vice presidency.”
At any rate, the Harris campaign released a statement on Thursday morning that signaled they were circling the wagons around Walz: It read:
After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired Veterans Affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform — and as Vice President of the United States he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families.In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country — in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.
So the question becomes how will Walz’s presence on the ticket impact the race? The current uproar will likely fade as the news cycle moves on. But the impression it will leave on voters will remain. The problem for the Harris campaign is that most voters knew nothing about Walz before this week.
Prior to appearing on Harris’s short list of potential running mates, Walz was largely unknown outside of Minnesota and its neighboring states. ABC News/Ipsos released a poll on July 28 which showed that 87% of U.S. adults either didn’t know enough about Walz to form an opinion or simply had no opinion. Six percent viewed Walz favorably and 7% viewed him unfavorably.
This was his introduction and he certainly didn’t endear himself to voters by starting off with a material lie. As they say, “falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,” or “false in one thing, false in everything.”
Pundits were widely expecting that Harris, already surpassing Trump in many national polls, would receive a further bounce in the polls when she revealed her vice presidential pick. We’ll have to wait a few days to see what impact, if any, the choice of Walz has had on Harris’s polling results.
Making matters worse is that lying about his military service isn’t Walz’s only negative. Investigators have turned up disturbing connections between the governor and China. According to the Washington Examiner’s John R. Schindler, a former senior intelligence analyst with the National Security Agency, Walz has traveled to China 30 times.
Schindler noted that Walz’s deep affection for China began when he traveled there in 1989 to teach high school. Upon his return, he and his wife set up a “company called Educational Travel Adventures centered on taking American students to China. Together, the couple visited China every summer until 2003, including spending their honeymoon there.”
In 1993, Walz admitted that these trips were “funded by the regime.” Schindler pointed out that “a young American with an affection for China, who was also a part-time member of the U.S. military, would have been a tempting recruiting target for Chinese intelligence.”
“Put simply,” he warned, “the Chinese communists aren’t running a holiday charity for American tourists. For those communists, nothing comes without a quid pro quo.” Schindler concludes that Walz’s “long history with China raises uncomfortable questions for anybody who understands how China works.”
And, of course, Walz’s is one of the most liberal governors in the U.S. During a call with the group White Dudes for Harris last week, Walz told supporters, “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”
The truth is that Walz embraces every radical position that Harris has spent the last two weeks trying to run away from and scrub from the internet. To name a few, he supports abortion up until the moment of birth, the Green New Deal, open borders, and taxpayer-funded services for illegal immigrants.
The Associated Press reported Walz turned Minnesota into a “trans refuge.” In April 2023, the state passed legislation encouraging out-of-state minors to come to Minnesota for gender-affirming treatment.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Walz’s selection is what it tells us about Harris’s judgment and her future plans. While this pick may excite her base, it is also likely to alienate many independents. This presents Republicans with an opportunity to stop the momentum and start winning again.
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Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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