Topline
Former President Donald Trump claimed Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s estranged brother endorsed him Wednesday, and shared a viral image purporting to show Walz family members wearing pro-Trump shirts—but Walz’s mother reportedly said the image features distant relatives, and his brother Jeff Walz indicated he doesn’t plan on endorsing anybody.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz speaks during a campaign rally on … [+]
Key Facts
Trump thanked “Jeff” for his purported endorsement in a Truth Social post on Wednesday and said they planned to meet “soon,” including in the post a photo of eight people wearing T-shirts printed with the slogan “Walz’s [sic] for Trump.”
Tim Walz’s mother, Darlene Walz, a lifelong Democrat who predicted Vice President Kamala Harris will beat Trump in November, told The Daily Beast the family members pictured are “mostly second cousins,” while Walz’s sister, Sandy Dietrich, told the Associated Press, “we weren’t close with them. We didn’t know them.”
The family members pictured said in a statement to the Associated Press that they are descendants of Francis Walz, the brother of Tim Walz’s grandfather.
The photo—which made the rounds among pro-Trump social media users—was initially shared on X Wednesday by Charles Herbster, the chairman of Rural Americans for Trump and a former Nebraska GOP gubernatorial candidate.
Herbster’s spokesperson Rod Edwards told Forbes a friend of the Walz family provided Herbster’s team with the photo, and while Edwards didn’t specify the family members’ names, he said the Minnesota governor’s older brother Jeff Walz—the subject of Trump’s post—was not in the image.
Trump’s separate claim that Jeff Walz endorsed him came hours after the older Walz—who donated $20 to Trump’s 2016 campaign—told NewsNation he “thought long and hard” about endorsing Trump, but doesn’t want to “put something out there to influence the general public.”
Jeff Walz’s political views first made waves after The New York Post unearthed a series of Facebook posts he made last week denouncing his brother’s politics and warning he is not the “type of character you want making decisions about your future,” cryptically citing “stories [he] could tell” (he later told NewsNation the “stories” were innocuous accounts of growing up together, like Tim Walz’s tendency to become car sick).
Darlene Walz acknowledged the rift between her sons but said she plans to “just stay out of it,” adding that Dietrich approached her brother, Jeff Walz, to be less critical of his brother, who told NewsNation “there is gong to be no further statements to anybody, and we’re not campaigning or anything, for him or against him or anything like that.”
Forbes has reached out to Trump and Harris’s campaigns for comment.
Key Background
Jeff Walz wrote on Facebook and later told NewsNation his family wasn’t given any warning that his brother had been tapped as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. He told NewsNation he wrote the posts to explain his political views to his friends and acquaintances, and acknowledged Facebook “wasn’t the right platform to do that for.” Jeff Walz said he and his brother have not spoken since the funeral of their younger brother, Craig, in 2016, aside from a brief conversation when he asked his older brother for tax information sought by Harris’s vetting team, which Jeff Walz said he declined to provide.
Tangent
Walz, who was tapped as Harris’ VP pick early last month, is in his second term as Minnesota governor and previously represented a rural Minnesota House district for 12 years. He is a retired high school teacher and football coach who spent 24 years serving in the National Guard. Walz grew up in Nebraska before moving to Minnesota with his wife, Gwen, in the 1990s.
Big Number
36%. That’s the share of U.S. adults who view Walz favorably, according to an Associated Press/NORC poll that found 25% view him unfavorably. Republican VP candidate, Sen. JD Vance’s, has a 27% favorability rating, while 44% of respondents view him unfavorably.
Further Reading
Everything You Need To Know About Tim Walz Ahead Of DNC Speech (Forbes)
Kamala Harris Picks Tim Walz As Running Mate: Here’s What To Know About Him (Forbes)
Tim Walz-JD Vance Polls: Walz More Popular Than Vance In Early Surveys (Forbes)
