Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, highlighted the widely criticized Project 2025 plan for a second presidency under former President Donald Trump in his speech at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday—a theme Democratic officials have emphasized throughout the DNC as Trump seeks to distance himself.
Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, speaks on stage during the third ... [+]
Walz, while accepting the nomination, said Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, “just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor,” pointing to Project 2025, which Walz said “will make things much, much harder for people who are just trying to live their lives.”
Walz warned that Trump and Vance would “start jacking up the costs on the middle class” if they’re re-elected,” calling the 900-some-page blueprint “weird,” a word he popularized among Democrats to criticize Republicans, adding, “It’s also wrong and it’s dangerous.”
Walz was one of several DNC speakers to castigate Project 2025, a hard-right blueprint for a hypothetical next GOP president prepared by the Heritage Foundation and several other conservative groups—the document isn’t officially linked to the Trump campaign, and Trump has said he disagrees with some aspects of it, but many of its authors are ex-Trump officials, leading opponents to warn Trump could implement the plan.
Walz framed the election as one about freedom—accusing Republicans of wanting the freedom to control Americans’ healthcare decisions, roll back environmental regulations and allow banks to take advantage of customers.
Referring to gun control measures he and Harris would implement, Walz said they want kids to have the “freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.”
Pointing to his own military background (he served 24 years in the National Guard) in an appeal to rural and moderate voters, Walz said “look I know guns, I’m a veteran, I’m a hunter, and I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I’ve got the trophies to prove it.”
Walz leaned into his background as a high school teacher and football coach during the speech, making multiple coaching references throughout the address and crediting his players and students with inspiring him to run for Congress; he was introduced by his former student, Benjamin C. Ingman, who brought some of his former players on stage.
“I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this, but I have given a lot of pep talks,” Walz said. “So let me finish with this team: it’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy do we have the right team.”
Walz’s 17-year-old son, Gus Walz, was pictured crying in the audience and saying “that’s my dad,” as Walz took the stage in one of the more viral moments of Walz’s speech.
Walz spoke about his and his wife’s struggle with fertility when they started their family, while criticizing some Republican-led laws to limit or eliminate in vitro fertilization treatments. Walz said he and his wife conceived through “fertility treatments.” Walz’s story about the couple’s struggle with fertility has been a point of attack in recent days. Republicans have accused Walz of falsely suggesting he and his wife, Gwen, conceived their first child through in vitro fertilization, pointing to a line Walz uses frequently on the campaign trail and repeated Wednesday night: “In Minnesota . . . we’ve got a golden rule, ‘mind your own damn business,’ and that includes IVF and fertility treatments. This is personal for Gwen and I,” he said, before detailing the “hell” he and his wife suffered while trying to conceive. Multiple major news outlets have reported in recent weeks the Walzes conceived through IVF, and the Walz-Harris campaign only recently clarified that the couple conceived through a less-invasive fertility treatment, intrauterine insemination. IUI is not being jeopardized by GOP-backed proposals targeting the commonly used practice in IVF of discarding unused embryos.
Walz closed out Wednesday’s program after speeches from former President Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. Harris is set to speak Thursday on the final night of the program. Harris named Walz her running mate on Aug. 6, after a hurried process to select her running mate that began with a slate of about a dozen rumored candidates, many of whom were better known than Walz nationally.
36%. That’s the share of Americans who view Walz favorably, while 25% view him unfavorably, according to a poll from the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Wednesday. Comparatively, 27% of U.S. adults view Vance favorably, while 44% view him unfavorably.
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