After Vice President Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket last month, the new nominee was forced to speed-run the usually months-long process of vetting potential running mates. It turned out to be a race between affable white men, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz came out on top.
“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep. It’s personal,” Harris wrote in a statement announcing her decision on Tuesday. “We are going to build a great partnership. We are going to build a great team. We are going to win this election.”
Walz is incredibly popular within his own state, one he has successfully governed on a message of economic advancement and progressive policies aimed at helping working families. His salt-of-the-earth charm makes him incredibly hard to hate, as well as an incredibly effective communicator. Walz has been called a “joyful warrior,” and images of him smiling while cuddling a piglet and giggling on carnival rides with his daughter have gone viral amid rumors that he was in the running for a spot on the ticket. But while Walz is the quintessential image of a nice midwestern dad, he’s also an expert in taking Republicans to task, and can be ruthless in his criticism when necessary.
Here’s a small sampling of times when Harris’ new running mate has stuck it to Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the Republican Party:
When he started calling Trump and Vance “weird”
Walz has been widely credited with the Democratic shift in messaging to start calling Trump and Vance what they are: weird as hell. He did so in a series of TV hits beginning last month. “These guys are just weird,” he said on MSNBC after tearing apart J.D. Vance’s claims of understanding small-town America apart. “They’re running for he-man women-haters club or something.”
He later explained the line of attack to CNN’s Jake Tapper: “My point on this was that people kept talking about how Trump is going to put women’s lives at risk — that’s 100-percent true. Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have and end voting — I do believe all those things are a real possibility. But it gives him way too much power. Listen to the guy. He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and whatever pops into his mind. I just think we give him way too much credit.”
When he defeated a six-term Republican incumbent to win his seat in the House
Before he was an elected lawmaker, Tim Walz was an enlisted servicemember, and a high school teacher and football coach. According to Walz, he decided to run for the House in 2004, after several of his students were denied entry to a speech given by former President George W. Bush in his hometown of Mankato, Minnesota, because they had previously volunteered for Democrats.
“While I had a passion for politics, I had never been overly involved in political campaigns, and many people thought that a high school teacher and football coach didn’t stand a chance,” Walz wrote on X in 2020.
In 2006, Walz ran, and he won, defeating six-term Republican incumbent Gil Gutknecht. He would serve six terms himself before running for governor in 2018.
When he dismantled Republican accusations that his policies are “socialism”
“They scream socialism, but we just build roads and schools and prosperity into this,” he told MSNBC before railing against how Trump and Republicans want to go “backwards” and “give tax cuts to the wealthy.”
“I’m all for pulling yourself up by your boot straps, but we didn’t have any boots,” he added. “Social security was the boots and we pulled ourselves up and we paid that back.”
When he exposed the GOP ticket as phonies
“These are weird people on the other side,” Walz told MSNBC. “They want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room. Listen to them speak, listen to how they talk about things. … [Republican leadership] has told [Republicans] that they shouldn’t take about race, but they can’t help it. It’s built into their DNA because they have no plan.”
Walz continued to attack Republican policies before going directly after Trump and Vance. “A robber baron real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are?” he said. “They don’t know who we are.”
When he and the state legislature passed a bonanza of progressive reforms in Minnesota
Walz won the governorship of Minnesota in 2018 in a blowout election against Republican Jeff Johnson. Initially, it would be an uphill struggle, with Republicans controlling the State Senate during the first years of his term.
In 2023, Minnesota’s Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party secured control of both chambers for the first time in a decade. The result was a progressive legislative tour de force that saw Walz sign into law universal free school meals, protections on reproductive freedoms, child tax credits, paid leave, massive infrastructure packages, universal gun background checks, and much much more.
Walz called the 93rd Minnesota Legislature the “most productive session in Minnesota history,” and “the most supportive of middle class and working people that we’ve ever seen.”
As Harris embarked on her search for a running mate, there’s no doubt that Walz’s accomplishments in his state heavily tipped the scales in his favor.
When he spoke very candidly about his feelings on Trump
“How often in 100 days do you get to change the trajectory of the world,” Walz said of the renewed effort to take down Trump. “How often do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come. How often do you make that bastard wake up and know that a Black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road.”
When he was a Midwestern dad — in the best way possible
Walz is more relatable than everyone in the GOP combined.
When he defended Harris taking over the ticket and made clear the GOP is stuck with Trump
“Democrats are ready to move when the situation warrants it,” he said on Fox News. “It doesn’t matter conviction, it doesn’t matter the failed policies, the Republican Party is stuck with Donald Trump. He’s yours, you’ve got him, welcome to it. The Democratic Party can make our decisions and pick our nominee. If you don’t like it, don’t vote for it in November.”
When he explained that the American dream is for everyone
“When someone else has rights, it’s not like a damn pie,” Walz said. “Rights aren’t that way. There’s enough for everybody. Same thing with jobs. Same thing with housing. Same thing with health care.”
“Yes, they’re a threat,” he continued, speaking about Trump and Republicans, “but we’re not going to stay in their frame, we’re not going to stay where they’re at, we’re not going to play their game. We called them out for the weird nonsense they believe and we presented a different argument to the American public, one where everybody matters, one where we can achieve, one where we solve problems.”
Natalie Harp with Donald Trump on July 22, 2026.
Nothing About Trump and Natalie Harp Is Normal
In early 2024, while reporting a story on New York’s boisterous, controversial Young Republican Club, one of my sources told me they had a pretty direct line to Donald Trump himself.
At the time, Trump wasn’t president again — yet. But he was campaigning, and in order to get something in front of his eyes you had to first get the attention of someone else: his assistant and right-hand woman, Natalie Harp.
Harp, 35, is now at the center of a major media frenzy, as Democrats like Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff have seized upon her unusual relationship with her boss: part assistant, part hype-man, part gatekeeper. On Sunday night, Ossoff made a comment that many interpreted as an insinuation that Harp had a more personal relationship to the president.
“The president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks,” Ossoff said at a campaign event in Georgia. “See he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
Ossoff’s comments set off a firestorm both in Democratic circles and the GOP’s reactionary messaging apparatus.
“Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted on Monday morning. By Tuesday, the entire media ecosystem had weighed in — with some coming right out and saying what they thought Ossoff was implying in his joke, and detailing why it was out of bounds.
“Ossoff was clearly implying that Trump was having an affair with his staffer,” Megyn Kelly wrote on X. Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna called him a “sexist arrogant jerk.” Pundit Robby Starbuck wrote that “Ossoff is a vile coward for insinuating they’re having an affair.” The flood of backlash poured out of just about every conservative commentator you could think of.
The White House joined the fray after CNN posed a question about Harp to Trump, asking him to respond to Ossoff’s comments directly. “You mean Pee-Wee Herman?” Trump quipped in the moment, referring to Ossoff. His comms team went for a full broadside later online. “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question,” Trump’s rapid response account posted at CNN reporter Kristen Holmes. “They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”
Ossoff, meanwhile, tried to soften the blow of his joke, redirecting it — sort of — away from Harp herself to make it more of a comment on the president’s relationship to his staff in general. “I’ve heard this particular aide referred to as his security blanket,” he told Jen Psaki on MS NOW. “And I think we could say that about any number of the senior aides in the White House.”
But the damage was done, and it’s hard to believe Ossoff didn’t know exactly what he was doing. In recent years, some Democrats have occasionally flirted with the type of mud-slinging that Trump and his imitators became known for, but they’ve rarely landed a hit that provoked this much of a reaction.
“What a coward. Own your sexist joke, bro,” right-wing commentator Scott Jennings posted.
Harp’s history — and her relationship to the president — give some clues as to why the Republican beehive is so agitated.
Harp began her career in the public eye as an anchor for One America News, a right-wing propaganda outlet that was founded in 2013 and became something of a mouthpiece for the Trump administration and then the MAGA movement during the Biden administration. Democrats and liberal commentators have pointed out that Harp was often fawning over Trump during her segments.
While these clips have been used as more evidence that Trump and Harp have a strange dynamic, it’s hard to say that this kind of content is outside of the norm for OAN’s programming at the time. But that doesn’t mean Harp’s history with Trump isn’t strange — even by MAGA supplicant standards.
At the 2020 Republican National Convention, she said she was a bone cancer survivor and credited her survival to a “Right to Try” policy pushed by Trump in 2018 that allowed patients to use experimental drugs.
“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” Harp said at the RNC. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”
The Washington Post, however, notes that the drug Harp used was already approved by the FDA — which would have meant that the “Right to Try” law wouldn’t have applied.
Still, it’s clear that Harp feels a close personal connection to Trump. After her short stint at OAN, the Post cited her as a Trump employee as early as 2022. In 2024, The New York Times reported that Harp’s primary role on Trump’s staff was what other aides called “the human printer” — following Trump around with a battery powered printer so she could give him physical copies of social media posts, missives, text messages, and positive, often conspiratorial news stories. The Post story in 2022 also detailed her in this role, noting that other aides were “particularly distressed” by her access to and influence with the president.
“She is indicative of the people around him who just love him,” one anonymous adviser told the Post in 2022. “Love him too much.”
The Times’ reporting also noted that Harp’s esteem for Trump was particularly fervent, describing how she wrote him a series of what the newspaper called “devotional letters,” one of which said: “You are all that matters to me.” The Times described her running behind Trump’s golf cart, reading him social media posts and news articles. Following one of those instances, the Times reports that she wrote him another letter, apologizing for being “an embarrassment” while on the golf course in Scotland. “I want things to always be right between us,” she wrote. “I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).” Harp signed the letter, “With all my heart, Natalie.”
Harp’s family have acknowledged that her relationship to Trump is not that of a traditional staffer. In an interview with CNN on Tuesday night, Harp’s estranged brother Preston Harp said that “Since she was 16 she’s had an obsession with – she’s written letters to other presidents, let me put it that way,” Preston Harp said, mentioning “George Bush during the Iraq War” and that “her dream came true finally.”
These details are certainly odd, but so is basically everything about the particularities of Trump’s inner circle. Ossoff’s comment, however, likely came at least partially in response to another outlandish story that broke earlier this month.
On August 10, the Post reported that Trump had covertly switched planes during a trip to Turkey, hiding in an airline catering truck with a tiny group of aides in order to dodge a potential attack on Air Force One by Iranian proxies. The White House press corps and several key government figures — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio — stayed on board the “decoy plane.” Harp did not. She was reportedly in the food truck with Trump.
It’s impossible to know the exact nature of Harp’s relationship with Trump. Ossoff did not specifically mention an affair, though it’s hard to interpret his familiar comment as anything else — and the right-wing media is reacting to it as such, trying to take a moral high ground on behalf of a president who has, at least in civil court, been found liable for sexual abuse on at least one count, and routinely makes sexist comments toward female reporters and others.
Jesse Watters of Fox News was one of the only right-wing commentators to recognize the hypocrisy of bashing Ossoff’s comment while supporting Trump: “Am I fazed by this comment? No. Has Trump said so much worse, so much more sleazy things against other people? Yes. Have I defended those things? Absolutely. So, I’m not going to pretend to be all hot and bothered by it.”
Watters is an outlier, though. No matter what the charges, Trump will always have his protectors in the GOP, some more loyal than others. In recent years, Natalie Harp has been more loyal than anyone else.