- How many dogs did Tim Walsh really have?
- How did the 60-year-old Democratic vice presidential candidate end up having children with Kamala Harris?
- Does he eat… racist tacos? Is it a “finger” of the Chinese Communist Party?
- Was he actually a football coach or even a US Army veteran?
Most of the above questions may sound like joke, but they have dominated the poisonously polarized US election landscape in recent days as Republicans and Donald Trump’s staff try to regain the communications edge.
Against this backdrop, a raging “mud” war has been going on lately.
It starts with former and would-be US President Donald Trump himself questioning his political opponent’s African-American roots and refusing to pronounce her name correctly, while calling her “extreme left”, “liar”, “crazy”, “dumb as a stone”.
He is continued by an “army” of his close associates, high-profile supporters, party stooges and internet trolls, who have now targeted Tim Walsh.
The obvious goal is to damage the profile and credibility of the governor of Minnesota.
A “next door” politician from the Midwest, with an appeal to white voters and the working class of rural America.
At the center of Republican efforts is now to portray him as a serial liar.
Not coincidentally, the attacks against Walsh increased in the run-up to Kamala Harris’s first interview as the Democratic presidential candidate on CNN in late August.
And together with Tim Walsh, whom Republican politicians – including the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders – described with an overly sexist attitude as a political “babysitter”.
“Rubber” misinformation, with full intolerance Strange as it may sound, the focus of one of Tim Walsh’s latest political smear attacks has been ‘Scout’, his black labrador.
Confusing… “his thighs” with online photos, a Republican strategist from Minnesota initially argued that Walsh is presenting different quadrupeds as “Scout” for purely petty political reasons. It was quickly refuted bitterly.
Nevertheless, many Republicans were quick to adopt the claims.
“If he lied about his dog’s name, he will lie about literally anything. I can’t put someone like him in charge of nuclear weapons,” wrote Kimberly Guilfoyle – former Fox News anchor, now fiancee of Donald Trump’s first-born son – in a post she later deleted.
It was one of many episodes in a string of misinformation and accusations by Republicans against Tim Walsh.
They call him “Tampon Tim,” who puts tampons and sanitary napkins in boys’ restrooms for transgender students because a law in Minnesota to provide free menstrual products in public schools went into effect in January.
A well-known supporter of abortion rights and access to fertility treatments, Walsh has come under heavy — if not unnecessary — criticism for lying about his and his wife’s IVF attempts to have children, when in fact they followed the procedure of intrauterine insemination.
The one who launched a fierce attack was his Republican opponent, Jay De Vance, who has caused an uproar with sexist comments such as “childless women with cats”.
And after Tim Walsh’s family of four made headlines at the recent Democratic convention, some Republicans mocked his 17-year-old son Gus — who has ADHD and a non-verbal learning disorder — and others accused Walsh of mistreating him on stage.
The “coach”, the National Guard and the… Chinese communists
Donald Trump doesn’t even want to hear the nickname “Coach Walsh”—in his years as an “assistant coach, not coach” football educator, he bothered to write on Truth Social.
Republicans also challenge Tim Walsh as a veteran of the National Guard, where he served for 24 years.
It focuses on his tenure—he himself had previously mistakenly implied that he served in a war zone—and what rank he eventually retired (major or lower), before politics got the better of him.
In any case, the issue is a double-edged sword for Donald Trump’s staff, given that he avoided serving in the Vietnam War by getting a doctor’s exemption for osteophytes in his feet.
However, the issue that seems to excite the Republicans is Tim Walsh’s one-year stay as a teacher in southern China – he taught English in Foshan, shortly after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 – and above all the fact that he has since visited the country about 30 times, also for educational reasons.
Just a few days ago, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, announced an investigation into the matter, requesting information from the FBI.
In the relevant letter, he even claims that “it has come to the committee’s attention that Governor Walsh has longstanding connections with entities and officials connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”
Nevertheless, in his 12 years as a US Congressman, Walsh has been anything but pro-Chinese.
He met with Tibetan leaders and Chinese dissidents. He was a member of a congressional committee on human rights violations by Beijing. He called his wedding on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre an act of remembrance.
Bag and… Somalis
Even the redesign of Minnesota’s flag has sparked Republican outrage. As a move, changing the flag of a US state is not unprecedented.
Minnesota alone has already changed it three times since 1893. Its latest version was voted one of the worst in the US by the North American Signage Association.
At the behest of the state House, a special committee approved a new plan in December, with strong Minnesota symbolism. It became official last May.
But after Walsh was chosen as Kamala Harris’ running mate, a social media war broke out, with accusations against the Democratic governor that the new flag was a reference to that of… Somalia. They call it a “woke” tribute to the state’s population of Somali descent – the largest on American soil.
That said, many accused Tim Walsh of veiled racist comments the other day when, in a campaign video with Kamala Harris a few days ago, the Democratic front-runner duo had a casual conversation “about food, music and the future of America.”
- “I’m eating a white guy’s taco,” Walsh says, “with ground beef and cheese.”
- “Are you seasoning it?” Harris asks.
- “No,” he replies, looking at the camera, “they told me to be careful and let her know that black pepper is the zenith of spice in Minnesota.”
According to Republicans, however, this pre-election video – in which the “duo” of the Democrats tried to project the image of two ordinary people and not two over-ambitious politicians – was another example of Walsh’s “lies”.
This time for his dietary preferences. As an argument, they cited a recipe that Walsh used to win a 2016 cooking contest among Minnesota congressional electors.
Since then known as Tim’s Turkey Taco Tot Hotdish, it has strong spices and sauce.
A political epithet
What seems to have left the most sour aftertaste for the Republicans with the still relatively unknown, but liked by the general public, Tim Walsh is the fact that in late July, before he was chosen by Kamala Harris as her electoral “match”, he a nickname for the Trump camp and the Trump-Vance election duo, which stuck with them.
“Strangers”.
It was a mockery, he explained, of the hypocrisy of Republicans when they talk about “liberty” while supporting abortion bans, censoring education and being hostile to the LGBTQI+ community.
Now the characterization of “foreigners” is widely used by Kamala Harris’ election campaign.
As the election season heads into the final stretch, the personal attacks are expected to get tougher here and there.
At the Democratic convention, for example, and in recent campaign speeches by Walsh himself, the word “couch” has been used several times in references to Republican vice-presidential candidate Jay DeVance, alluding to salacious, unsubstantiated Internet rumors – which started by a troll – that Republican vice presidential candidate Jay De Vance once had … sex with a couch, using a latex glove wedged between two pillows.
Overall the sheer volume of false – even trivial – claims can lead to the perception that there is some truth to them.
After all, the central idea of personal attacks, beyond politics, is the discrediting of the opponent’s personality.
A negative election campaign can scare away voters, especially those who are not fanatically partisan.
And this could be pivotal in crucial electoral contests like the one in November, where the outcome could be decided in the thread.
