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    • Does Tim Walz’s Family Support Trump? Trump Claims Jeff Walz Supported Him
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    Does Tim Walz’s Family Support Trump? Trump Claims Jeff Walz Supported Him

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    Topline

    Former President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that the estranged brother of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz endorsed him, despite Jeff Walz having said hours earlier that he had no intention of publicly endorsing the former president. Trump backed up the claims with an unverified viral image purportedly showing Walz’s relatives wearing pro-Trump T-shirts.

    Key Facts

    Trump thanked “Jeff” for his support in a Truth Social post on Wednesday and said they planned to meet “soon,” including a photo in the post of eight people wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Walz’s (sic) for Trump.”

    The photo was originally shared on Wednesday by Charles Herbster, chairman of Rural Americans for Trump and a former Republican candidate for governor of Nebraska, and later circulated among pro-Trump social media users.

    The family members in the photo are descendants of Francis Walz, the brother of Tim Walz’s grandfather, Herbster spokesman Rod Edwards told Forbes. He added that a Walz family friend had given the Herbster team the photo and that one of the people had verified the image’s authenticity directly with Edwards.

    Edwards did not name the family members, but said the older brother of Minnesota Gov. Jeff Walz, the subject of Trump’s message, was not in the photo.

    Trump’s claim that Jeff Walz endorsed him came hours after the elder Walz — who donated $20 to Trump’s campaign in 2016 — told NewsNation that he had “thought long and hard” about supporting Trump but “didn’t want to put anything out there to influence the general public.”

    Jeff Walz’s political views have been in the news since The New York Post last week exposed a series of Facebook posts he made in which he condemned his brother’s political views and warned that he was not “the type of character you want to make decisions about your future.” He cryptically cited “stories he could tell” (he later told NewsNation that the “stories” were innocent accounts of growing up together, such as Tim Walz’s tendency to get carsick).

    Forbes has reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment.

    Main background

    Jeff Walz wrote on Facebook and later told NewsNation that his family had no warning that his brother had been tipped as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. He told NewsNation that he wrote the posts to explain his political views to friends and acquaintances, and acknowledged that Facebook “wasn’t the right platform to do that.” Jeff Walz said he and his brother haven’t 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 requested by Harris’s vetting team, which Jeff Walz said he refused to provide.

    Tangent

    Walz, who was chosen as Harris’ VP pick early last month, is serving his second term as Minnesota’s governor and previously represented a rural Minnesota House district for 12 years. He is a retired high school teacher and football coach who served in the National Guard for 24 years. Walz grew up in Nebraska before moving to Minnesota with his wife, Gwen, in the 1990s.

    Large number

    36%. That’s the share of American adults who view Walz favorably, according to an Associated Press/NORC poll, which found 25% view him unfavorably. Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance has a 27% positive rating, while 44% of respondents view him unfavorably.

    Read more

    Everything You Need to Know About Tim Walz Ahead of His DNC Speech (Forbes)

    Kamala Harris Chooses Tim Walz as Running Mate: Here’s What You Need to Know About Him (Forbes)

    Tim Walz-JD Vance Polls: Walz More Popular Than Vance in Early Polls (Forbes)

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