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By Ewan Palmer
News Reporter
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Donald Trump is facing an opponent who can effectively land insults now that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was announced as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate in the 2024 race.
In the space of a few days, Walz went from being largely unknown outside the Midwest to being a front-runner on Harris' vice presidential short list. His rise was partly due to the governor being credited with starting the Democratic attack line that Trump and other GOP figures—including his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance—are "weird" during an interview on MSNBC in late July.
The insult stuck after going viral on social media and remains a key line of attack from Harris' team and other Democrats, who suggest that the current state of the GOP is off-putting to voters.
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Citing unnamed sources, Nandita Bose, a White House correspondent at Reuters, reported that one reason Harris picked Walz as her running mate was because starting the "weird" campaign showed that he is an effective messenger and "will take the fight" to Trump and Vance going forward.
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For years, Trump has insulted his political opponents, sometimes to devastating effect.
He frequently labeled President Joe Biden "Sleepy Joe"; dubbed Texas Senator Ted Cruz "Lyin' Ted" during the 2016 Republican primary; and called Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election, "crooked."
As the election draws near, Trump and Vance are facing months of further attacks from Walz—which, crucially, could stick in the minds of voters.
T.J. McCormack, a Republican communications specialist, suggested that Trump should focus on policies going forward, rather than a war of words with the Democrats.
"Just as always, it comes down to message discipline for Trump. Let the other side call names and hit Harris-Walz on the issues," McCormack told Newsweek.
"From the economy and the border crisis to parental rights to law and order, Trump should marry himself to those issues and the classic political question, 'Are you better off today than you were four years ago?'"
During Tuesday's campaign rally in Philadelphia, where the Minnesota governor was introduced as Harris' running mate for the first time, Walz doubled down on his "weird" attack.
He also mocked Vance while referencing the baseless claim that the Republican wrote about having sex with a couch in his Hillbilly Elegy memoir.
"Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community. Come on, that's not what Middle America is," Walz said.
"And I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy. That is, if he's willing to get off the couch and show up," he added.
Walz continued, "I just have to say it—you know it; you feel it—these guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell."
Newsweek has contacted Trump and Vance's team for comment via email.
Jennifer Mercieca, a historian at Texas A&M University who wrote a book on Trump's rhetoric, explained why the "weird" insult against the GOP is having such an effect.
"The opposite of normalizing authoritarianism is to make it weird, to call it out and to sort of mock it," Mercieca told the Associated Press.
"To say, 'Hey, that's a weird thing you're doing,' calling your opposition enemies instead of saying that they're good people who have different policy preferences," she continued.
Elsewhere at Tuesday's rally, Walz went after Trump over his felony conviction in the falsifying business records case.
"He sows chaos and division. And that's to say nothing of his record as president. He froze in the face of the COVID crisis. He drove our economy into the ground," Walz said.
"And make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump—that's not even counting the crimes he committed," he added.
Following Walz's selection as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Trump's campaign has attempted to label the governor as a "far-left radical."
"By picking Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala Harris not only bent the knee to the radical left, she doubled down on her dangerously liberal, weak, and failed agenda," Brian Hughes, the Trump campaign's senior adviser, said in a statement.
He continued: "Walz would be a rubberstamp for Kamala to wage war on American energy, continue aiding and abetting an invasion on our border, and embolden our adversaries as the world is brought to the brink of World War III."
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