The criticism has begun for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz just a day after Vice President Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate. During a notable moment on CNN, a Republican guest pressed host Dana Bash, challenging her claim that Walz’s “superpower” is “how normal” he is amid the current political climate.
Scott Jennings, a conservative contributor, criticized Dana Bash after she praised Harris for selecting Walz, a Midwesterner previously admired by both Republican and Democratic leaders. Jennings pointed out that Walz has since taken a hard-left turn as governor, and Republicans are now emphasizing his handling of the 2020 George Floyd riots in Minneapolis and the associated summer of unrest. Jennings echoed these criticisms in his response to Bash.
“Is he [normal]?” Jennings asked in response. “I don’t know. Is it normal to let the biggest city in your state burn while you’re the Governor for four days, destroying thousands of businesses and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, while you do nothing?” He continued, “Is it normal for your wife to say she opened the window so she could let the smell of tire fires waft in so they could take in the smells of this radical chaos and anarchy on the streets of Minneapolis? I don’t view any of this as normal. I view this through the lens of decision-making.”
“In two cases, they’ve showed us who they are. Kamala Harris absolutely bowed down to the radical left by not giving [Joshua] Shapiro [VP],” Jennings said, a reference to the Jewish Pennsylvania governor who Harris advisors feared would inflame tensions with pro-Palestinian activists making antisemitic criticisms of him known. “There was a nasty campaign run against him. Everybody knows it. Nobody wants to admit it, but everybody knows it. And she wound up choosing the person who was not Jewish and not as talented, and not from the state that she has to win.”
“Everybody could see that [Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro] was the best choice, but she couldn’t do it because the party is somewhat awash in antisemitism,” Jennings said. “And for Walz, when he did what he did during the riots, to me, it was him saying ‘I don’t have the. strength or the character to stand up to this anarchy.’ So in two big decision points for this ticket, they’ve showed us they will always bow down to the radical left. So if you want to talk about normal, to the normal people in this country, bowing down to the radical left is not normal, it shouldn’t be normal, and it should be a flashing red light to the normies of America that this is not the ticket for you.”
Jennings makes good points. Just this week, a 2017 clip of Harris urging “everybody” to be “woke” has resurfaced on social media, prompting critics and conservatives to denounce the official Democratic nominee as a “Communist functionary” and accuse her of being “too radical” to serve as president, Fox News reported.
“We have to stay woke. Like everybody needs to be woke. And you can talk about if you’re the wokest or woker, but just stay more woke than less woke,” a cackling then-Sen. Harris said in 2017 during Recode’s annual Code Conference, alongside philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, during the conference.
The conference addressed topics like immigration and the environment, with Harris criticizing the Trump administration’s drug and immigration policies just before her call for Americans to be “woke.” She said: “I get upset when we say we’re going to shut our door to refugees who are fleeing such atrocities and have been standing in line for two years to qualify for refugee status, and they arrive here, and we turn them away. Yes, I’m gonna get mad about that. I’m gonna get mad when we have an attorney general who’s trying to resuscitate the war on drugs. And he thinks the greatest evil that mankind has ever seen is marijuana. … Leave grandma’s medical marijuana alone.”
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.