Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher born in rural Nebraska, will speak to the biggest audience of his political career on Wednesday when he formally accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president on the third night of the party’s convention in Chicago.
The speech will be a major test of Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose the gregarious — and little-known — Midwestern governor as her running mate just 15 days ago, and the biggest chance yet for Walz to introduce himself to the nation.
Harris selected Walz after an intense, shortened vetting process two weeks after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. His name emerged among other, better-known contenders from important swing states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Although popular at home, Walz did not have much of a national profile until he critiqued Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as being “weird.” That one word proved surprisingly effective in confounding a former president known for name-calling, and it catapulted the blunt-speaking Walz into the national spotlight.
His speech is expected to focus on his rural upbringing and his time in the Army National Guard and as a public school teacher, football coach. It likely will be an attempt to drive home his oft-spoken desire to bring joy back into the nation’s politics in the face of what Democrats have described as Trump’s attempts to stoke fear and anger.
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and former President Clinton spoke to the convention crowd Wednesday evening.
Pelosi focused her short speech on the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, during which she sheltered in a secure location as Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the certification of Biden’s presidential.
She said of Trump: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6. He did.”
“The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
She also noted her time serving with Walz for 12 years in Congress and lauded him for representing a conservative district as a Democrat.
Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016, called Trump a narcissist obsessed with his own power.
“In 2024, we’ve got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me: Kamala Harris for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than in the first go-round, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Clinton, who turned 78 this week and is two months younger than Trump, cracked that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”
It was a pointed joke, given that Biden, 81, dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age and electability.
Clinton, who famously enjoyed Big Macs while in office, referenced Harris’s job at the Golden Arches when she was a young, saying, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
The speech followed a graphic video of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of rioters erecting gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
In an emotional speech, Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant, retired Capitol Police officer, and former Army sergeant, told the crowd he saw violence while serving in Iraq, but “nothing prepared me for January 6.”
“I was assaulted by a pole attached to the American flag,” he said. “President Trump summoned our attackers and sided with them. He betrayed us.”
The evening also featured a performance by singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who performed his 1973 hit “Higher Ground,” and remarks by Indian-American actress, comedian and screenwriter Mindy Kaling, who joked that she was “the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an instagram cooking video” — a reference to Trump’s false claim that Harris only promoted her South Asian heritage and misled voters about her also being Black.
Walz’s speech is expected to rely heavily upon his rural roots.
Before being elected as Minnesota’s governor in 2018, Walz served six terms in Congress, representing southern Minnesota’s rural, Republican-leaning 1st District.
He served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005. Republicans — led by Vance, a Marine Corps veteran — have heavily criticized Walz’s service record, accusing him of abandoning his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his military rank for political gain.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. He achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans, criticizing him for for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
The Trump campaign, which has been testing out insulting nicknames for the former president’s opponents, sent an email Wednesday night calling them Freakish Walz and Comrade Kamala.
Democrats have lauded Walz as a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
The party has heartily embraced his persona — a Midwestern dad who hunts, doles out advice on fixing cars, brags about his tater tot hotdish recipe, and took the call from Harris asking him to be her running mate while wearing a camouflage baseball cap. (The campaign quickly began selling camo Harris-Walz hats, which sold out instantly.)
Speaking at the convention Tuesday night, former President Obama joked about Walz’s wardrobe, saying “you can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant, they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.”
In the audience, Walz’s wife, Gwen, nodded heartily.
