Democrat Who Started Trump ‘Weird’ Comment a ‘Great’ VP Option: Mary Trump

Donald Trump‘s niece, Mary Trump, says Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz, who recently went viral for calling Trump and his camp “weird,” should be the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

A frequent critic of her uncle, Mary Trump said Monday that Waltz was “making his way up the leaderboard” as a possible running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris‘ campaign, applauding him for the “succinct” way in which he’s framed the presidential race.

“I think he would be great,” she said during her daily livestream. “He’s got great presence. He tells it like it is and he also makes it clear, to the extent that it wasn’t clear, that the last thing in the world Donald Trump needed was a vice presidential candidate on his ticket who’s weirder than he is. How is that even possible, right?”

Waltz, a two-term governor who would likely help Harris with progressives, has recently emerged on her shortlist of VP picks after going viral for calling Trump and GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance “weird.” Waltz has long used the line of attack against Republicans, but went viral over the weekend after he told a crowd of canvassers in St. Paul on Saturday that Trump and Vance were “just weird.”

“That’s who they are, it isn’t much else,” Waltz said to laughter, adding that, “We’re not afraid of weird people—we’re a little bit creeped out—but we’re not afraid.”

Harris and her campaign have also adopted his language. Over the weekend, the vice president called Republican attacks against her “just plain weird.”

“Obviously, the important things here are about the authoritarianism, the extremism, the threats to democracy. But it’s sometimes hard to connect voters to these very large ideas,” said Mary Trump summarizing Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo blog post Monday. “All of us understand weirdness. JD Vance is a deeply, deeply weird person.”

“The power of ‘weird’ is that it clusters together all of the things Democrats care about and want to prevent under the vast, degenerate banner of Trumpism in a language that is intuitively understandable,” she quoted Marshall.

Walz, who serves as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, has blamed Trump and his allies for dividing Americans, telling MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” last week that “we do not like what has happened, where we can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner with our uncle because you end in some weird fight that is unnecessary.”

As presenters laughed at his comment, the governor doubled down, saying: “These guys are just weird and they’re running for He-Man women’s haters club or something, that’s what they go at. That’s not what people are interested in.”

He also made direct attacks at Vance, who would be his opponent if Harris taps Walz as her VP, criticizing the Ohio Republican for “knowing nothing about small-town America.”

“My town had 400 people in it, 24 kids in my graduating class, 12 were cousins and he gets it all wrong,” Walz, who hails from Nebraska, said of Vance. “It’s not about hate, it’s not about collapsing in. The golden rule there is mind your own damn business. Their policies are what destroyed rural America. They’ve divided us.”

Walz, who is popular among union leaders and has helped usher in progressive policies in the swing state of Minnesota, could help Harris shore up support from white, working-class voters in crucial Midwestern states.

He entered politics in 2006 after defeating incumbent Republican Representative Gil Gutknecht in Minnesota’s 1st district and becoming a rare Democrat representing a rural district. As a former National Guard, Walz was the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to serve Congress at the time. He served in the House for 12 years before becoming governor in 2018.

Asked by CNN on Sunday if he would serve as Harris’ VP, the governor said he “would do what is in the best interest of the country,” stopping short of confirming that Harris’ campaign had contacted him.

“Being mentioned is certainly an honor,” he told the State of the Union show.