By Rick Manning
It is official, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has settled on the radical left-wing Governor of Minnesota as her running mate, rejecting calls to pick someone more centrist and obliterating all hope that she will govern reasonably if elected.
The news broke Tuesday that Harris had selected far-left Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential pick, sidestepping Governor Josh Shapiro, despite Shapiro presiding over the coveted swing state of Pennsylvania. Harris breezed over other more moderate choices and appears to be promising to double down on a radical trajectory for the United States should she win in November.
The mainstream media may be attempting to portray Tim Walz as a folksy “dad” figure from a friendly midwestern state, but he is a radical who watched Minneapolis descend into rioting and looting for three days straight during the George Floyd riots in 2020 before finally sending in the National Guard.
Walz’s reasoning for allowing the city to descend into chaos was not comforting. At a press conference in May 2020, Walz remarked on the riots: “I want to just be clear, there’s philosophically an argument to be made that an armed presence on the ground in the midst of where we just had a police killing is seen as a catalyst. My point to that was is, we don’t need a catalyst, it’s already burning.”
The city was indeed already burning. Walz was a sitting Governor watching a city in utter mayhem and chose to allow it to continue far longer than it needed to based on a radical assertion that there is a ‘philosophical’ argument against breaking up a violent protest. Americans have a right to peaceful protest, not to exert violence and destroy private and public property, and the fact that Walz was willing to let the city deteriorate to the point that a police precinct was set on fire does not bode well for his approach to crime as Vice President.
Walz also refused to admit that most of the rioters were in fact Minnesotans, portraying them as opportunistic out of towners using Floyd’s death as an excuse to loot and riot. However, arrest records later showed that a vast majority of the rioters and looters upending the city were Minnesota residents, a fact that demonstrates the Governor’s absurd refusal to face reality during times of distress.
Crime rates in Minnesota have been on a bleak trajectory overall since 2018 when Walz was elected Governor of the state, with a 2022 report revealing a vast uptick in the murder rate, aggravated assault rate, burglary rate, and vehicle theft rate.
The report, produced by Minnesota-based civic research group the American Experiment, reveals a vast 36 percent spike in violent crime between 2018, when Walz was elected, and 2022, four years into his governorship. The report finds an 84 percent increase in the murder rate and a 59 percent increase in the aggravated assault rate over the same period, devastating statistics for Minnesotans and a bleak picture for the rest of the country if the Walz and Harris radicals enter the White House in November.
Walz appears to have a preference for looking the other way when it comes to crime and corruption in the state. He appeared to do so when $250 million dollars of covid relief funds that were supposed to feed hungry children were rerouted into the pockets of criminals in a fraud scheme which Republicans criticize him for not putting an end to earlier.
Walz appears to have unashamedly adopted a defeatist mentality when it comes to crime, ignoring the issue or blaming outside interests when criminals riot and destroy property and looking the other way when fraudsters steal taxpayer money. Walz also signed a dangerous bill into law that expands illegal immigrant access to government IDs and made Minnesota a “sanctuary state” for those seeking or performing transgender procedures on children. There is little question that Walz will continue to cave to criminals and radicals if he makes it into the White House with Harris in November.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
