“Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide,” said Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokeswoman. “If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: Just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”
Later on Fox News, Ms. Leavitt opened a more aggressive line of attack by falsely saying Mr. Walz wanted to “defund the police” and describing the streets of Minneapolis as “literally burned to the ground” during riots after a Minneapolis police officer was filmed murdering George Floyd in May 2020.
Mr. Trump’s allies followed suit. Referring to the violence, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that “Harris egged it on and Walz sat by and let Minneapolis burn.”
“Harris-Walz: most left-wing ticket in American history,” Mr. DeSantis said in a social media post.
Mr. Walz has previously faced criticism for the Minneapolis unrest. Two days after Mr. Floyd’s death, as protests grew increasingly violent, the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, asked Mr. Walz to deploy the National Guard. But it was not until the next afternoon that Mr. Walz signed an executive order allowing the Guard to help cities, a delay that Republicans and other critics have focused on even as Mr. Walz has defended his actions.
Republican House members also zeroed in on the riots.
