Donald Trump’s campaign and the conservative movement have been grasping at straws trying to tar Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, since he joined her ticket this week.
They have revived previously debunked allegations downplaying Walz’s 24 years of military service. And Trump has said Walz would “unleash hell” on the U.S. and denounced his handling as governor of Minnesota of the 2020 social justice protests — a claim that’s undercut by recently unearthed audio in which Trump praised his handling of those protests.
So Republican influencers and media types are pushing another line of attack: claiming Walz secretly despises white people. Newsmax host Rob Schmitt, claiming to know Walz’s true motivations, said on Wednesday that Walz has been eager to “decimate the history of his own state to capitulate to a population of asylum-seekers in this country from Africa.”
“Tim Walz is the white guy with a white wife and white kids who hates white people,” Schmitt argued. “That’s who Tim Walz is. We all know a guy like that. He’s the left-wing cancer that we can’t seem to cure in this country. He is the embodiment of that.”
Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo posted a long thread on X suggesting that because Walz may have read Black authors, he’s been inspired to “exclude whites from government programs.” That was a dubious characterization of Walz’s commitment to distribute 50% of a government funding program to minority business owners. Rufo also retweeted a user who claimed Walz is a “self-hating white man” who’s “trying to be forgiven for his skin crime.”
And during a recent appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, former Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota falsely claimed Walz signed a law that “infused all the school curriculum with wokeism” and mandated the teaching of what she called a “George Floyd hate whitey curriculum.” She added, “Everything is about race. It’s ‘hate white people, white people are evil.’ And that’s in all of the curriculum.” In reality, Walz signed a law this year that prohibited school libraries from banning a book “based solely on its viewpoint or the messages, ideas, or opinions it conveys,” a counter to Republican efforts to ban books about systemic racism and inequality. That law still allows schools to restrict access to books over “legitimate” concerns about appropriateness.
These are some of the scare tactics right-wing influencers and media are using, trying to portray a white man who’s shown concern for marginalized people as some sort of menacing, anti-white race traitor. This is a tactic that’s been deployed against white Americans who’ve opposed racism in the past. But aside from exposing those who make such claims as bigots, it also makes them look flat-out bizarre. As the Harris campaign continues to make the case to voters that its opponents are “weird,” in plain speak, Republicans can’t seem to resist embracing the toxic rhetoric of the darkest right-wing fringe.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.