Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) has defended the Harris campaign accepting endorsements from former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), as it helps them try to win over uncommitted voters.
Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, explained that the Harris campaign has “a big tent” of endorsements, ranging from the Cheneys, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and musician Taylor Swift. This comment prompted Comedy Central’s The Daily Show host Jon Stewart to jokingly ask, “What country did Taylor Swift get us to invade,” a reference to the former vice president’s longtime support for the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.
“There is still a core group of folks out there, you know, your point being, the ‘don’t tread on me,’ the Reagan piece of this, the Libertarian piece, the Constitutional piece, there are a lot of people out there,” Walz said on Stewart’s show. “I think Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney give permission to those folks who want to find a reason to do the right thing.”
Walz suggested that accepting the endorsements of Republican politicians does not mean they are adopting their viewpoints, such as their foreign policy records. Stewart then jokingly asked if Walz would “promise” not to enact Dick Cheney’s foreign policy decisions, to which Walz laughed and responded, “Yes.”
The former vice president’s endorsement has been both praised and criticized ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) questioning why the Democratic Party suddenly embraced the “genocidal war criminal” it spent years criticizing. Sanders, meanwhile, has praised both Dick Cheney and his daughter for endorsing Harris and “their courage in defending democracy.”
Toward the end of Walz’s interview, he was asked what his proudest accomplishment as governor was, to which he answered, “Free breakfast and lunch for kids.” Walz signed a bill in March 2023, a few months after he was reelected to a second gubernatorial term, to make this possible.
“And the philosophy we have, and this is what I know Kamala agrees in, you’re either going to buy school buses and school meals or prison buses and prison meals,” Walz said. “It makes more sense to bulk on the front end. You solve a lot of those problems.”
With just two weeks left before the election, both Harris and former President Donald Trump only have a matter of days to make their case to voters. As such, Harris was joined by Liz Cheney for a town hall discussion in Pennsylvania, during which she expressed a desire to move past “the last decade” of the former president.
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On Monday, Trump issued a statement noting that Harris is campaigning with “‘dumb as a rock’ War Hawk” Liz Cheney, warning Arab-American voters that the former congresswoman “wants to go to War with every Muslim Country known to mankind.” He also warned that a Harris presidency could bring about a third world war and encouraged readers to “vote for peace.”
Trump was also in Pennsylvania recently, during which he visited a McDonald’s restaurant to work behind the counter at the fry stand and in the drive-thru window. The visit, as well as his attendance at Sunday night’s Pittsburgh Steelers game, created a giant crash wave on social media Sunday.