Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a reported contender to be Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, explained to CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday morning why he calls former President Donald Trump "weird."
President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris last Sunday following weeks of interparty fighting among Democrats on whether he should pass the torch to the next generation after his debate fiasco against Trump, the newly confirmed GOP presidential nominee, last month.
The Trump campaign and its allies have been criticizing Harris for being soft on crime before entering the Biden administration and failing to secure the U.S.-Mexico border as vice president. Harris, meanwhile, was never in charge of border security, but rather was tasked with addressing the "root causes" of migration. She has also faced racist and sexist attacks. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign has been promoting the vice president as a former prosecutor who advocates for gun reform and women's reproductive rights, while Trump is a convicted felon.
Democrats have highlighted Trump's four criminal indictments—one of which resulted in 34 felony convictions of falsifying business records in New York in late May and one pertaining to the mishandling of classified documents, which was dismissed earlier this month. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and claims the cases are politically motivated against him.
On CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, Tapper said he believed Walz was the one who started describing Trump as "weird" and asked, "Why do you think weird is a more effective attack line against Trump than what Democrats have done previously, which is argue that he's an existential threat to democracy?"
"People kept talking about, look Donald Trump is going to put women's lives at risk. That's 100 percent true. Donald Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have and voting. I do believe all those things are a real possibility, but it gives him way too much power," Walz said.
Trump has proudly taken responsibility for getting Roe v. Wade overturned in the summer of 2022, which ended the federal protection of abortion and left the issue up to the states. The former president appointed three Supreme Court justices during his tenure, giving the Court a 6-3 conservative tilt.
Meanwhile, Trump has refused to accept the results of the 2020 election, which led to the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, in which Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building to stop the certification of Biden's election win, which Democrats have used as a talking point to argue that Trump is a threat to democracy.
Walz continued: "Listen to the guy. He's talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind. And I thought we just think we give him way too much credit...Have you ever seen the guy laugh? That seems very weird to me that an adult can go through six-and-a-half years in the public eye, if he has laughed, it's at someone and not with someone. That is weird behavior."
Newsweek has reached out to Harris and Trump's campaigns and Walz's office via email for comment on Sunday afternoon.
Trump has rambled on about Hannibal Lecter, a serial killer who eats his victims in The Silence of the Lambs, at multiple campaign rallies.
The former president has also posed a hypothetical scenario in which a boat with a large battery sinks while a shark is nearby on several occasions.
"If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking, do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted?" Trump asked during a rally in Las Vegas in June. "Or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?"
Meanwhile, at her first campaign fundraiser as a presidential candidate in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday, Harris told the crowd, "You may have noticed, Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record, and some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it's just plain weird."
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Harris campaign sent out a statement following Trump's phone interview on Fox News' Fox & Friends on Thursday.
During the interview, Trump discussed Biden stepping down, Harris' recently launched campaign for president and his newly announced running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.
The campaign's statement was titled "Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal's Fox News Appearance" and included some main takeaways, in their opinion, from the interview with Fox News' Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, Brian Kilmeade and Lawrence Jones, including "Trump is old and quite weird?"
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About the writer
Rachel Dobkin is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on politics. Rachel joined Newsweek in ... Read more