“Fat, bald, stupid Genghis Khan.”
“He’s abandoned his troops.”
“He's a freak in sheep's clothing.”
Conservatives have many lines of attack for Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.
In less than a week since Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris tabbed him as her running mate, Republican elected officials and Fox News hosts and commentators have ripped into Walz and argued his liberal record as Minnesota governor would be dangerous for the United States.
“This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner,” Donald Trump said the day after Harris picked Walz.
Prager University CEO Marissa Streit told Fox News that Walz has “exhibited Marxist and almost Islamic behavior” in Minnesota, pointing to the state adopting a new flag.
“He changed Minnesota's flag to look basically like a Somali flag,” Streit said last Wednesday, despite aesthetic differences between the two flags.
Walz’s counterpart, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, is among the conservatives who have hammered Walz over his time in the Army National Guard, claiming his decision decades ago to run for Congress a few months before his unit deployed for Iraq amounted to abandonment.
“What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq?” Vance said at a news conference last week. “What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage.”
“He went AWOL on his own unit,” Fox News contributor Joe Concha said last week.
There is no evidence that Walz, who served in the National Guard for 24 years, had advance notice that his unit would be deployed to Iraq when he retired to run for office.
Conservatives have also honed in on Walz’s handling of the racial justice protests after a white police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. Walz has been accused of delaying sending the National Guard to respond to some instances of looting, violence, and unrest, a charge he denies.
“People would love to mind their own damn business if you, asshole, hadn't let rioters burn down those businesses!” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said last week, referencing Walz’s “mind your own damn business” tagline.
