Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s mother, Darlene Walz, supports her son’s bid for vice president, even as other family members are divided, she told NBC News in a brief phone interview Thursday.
Darlene Walz has revealed that she is fed up with her family’s public scrutiny and believes her son is “going to be in the White House”.
Family disagreements over Walz’s role as the Democratic vice presidential nominee became public last week after a Facebook post and several subsequent comments from his estranged older brother, Jeff. numerous media outlets.
“I haven’t spoken to him for eight years. I am 100% against his whole ideology. My family was given no notification that he had been selected and was denied protection a few days later,” the elder Walz wrote. A comment on Facebookhe later added that he was considering publicly endorsing former President Donald Trump.
according to public recordsJeff Walz donated $20 to the Trump campaign in 2016.
The units were further strengthened on Wednesday, a a picture of several people “Nebraska Walz’s for Trump” t-shirts began circulating on X.
A source close to Walz told NBC News that those depicted in the now-viral photo are distant cousins.
Harris-Walz campaign officials told NBC News that they did not recognize the faces in the photo, adding that research teams were unable to identify all of them.
The campaign did not respond to inquiries from NBC News about whether the governor himself specifically recognized anyone in the photo.
Trump quickly seized the photo, praises it as confirmed by the Walz family on the social media platform.
But Harris-Walz campaign officials took a lighter approach, believing it wouldn’t change much in the race and rejecting the notion of a deep family divide.
“It’s fun and funny, and we don’t feel like it’s a particularly difficult attack for us,” one official said.
Governor Waltz weaves aspects of family division into his stump speech, often calling for greater unity not only in politics but also at the dinner table.
“Some of us with white hair are old enough to remember when you could go to Thanksgiving, watch the Steelers with your relatives, and not complain about politics all the time. Don’t be at each other’s throats,” Walz said on the campaign trail in August in Rochester, Pennsylvania.
“It’s a familiar thing for a lot of voters, especially in rural America, in the Midwest,” said one campaign official, who described Walz’s position that “we can agree on politics and still have a good time together.” “Almost every family has had some sort of strained or broken relationship after Trump.”
The source said that while Walz doesn’t intend to focus on his family, he isn’t necessarily shying away from it.
“He’s gone on Fox News in the past, joked that he’s going to get on there and check in with his extended family. This is his life,” the officer added. “He comes from the deep red part of Nebraska. We will probably lose many of our cousins there.”
Catherine Koretsky contributed.