Tim Walz's sister says they 'didn’t know' distant Trump-supporting Nebraska relatives
Tim Walz's sister is trying to correct the record after a group purporting to be Nebraska-based family members of Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate staged a picture this week in which they all wore shirts saying, "NEBRASKA WALZ'S FOR TRUMP."
Former President Donald Trump called the photo a "great honor" and repeated the claim at a Wednesday night town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
It turns out that, although Nebraska is indeed the state where Walz grew up, the people posing in that photo are distant relatives.
According to The Associated Press, a spokesperson for Charles Herbster, who previously ran for governor of Nebraska with Trump's endorsement but lost the primary amid allegations of groping, said the relatives in the photo were "descendants of Francis Walz, who was brother to Tim Walz’s grandfather.”
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"Walz’s sister, Sandy Dietrich, of Alliance, Nebraska, said she suspected it might be people from that branch of the family. Dietrich and Walz’s father, James Walz, died of lung cancer in 1984 when the future congressman and Minnesota governor was just a teenager. His father had been the school superintendent in Valentine, Nebraska," noted the report.
“We weren’t close with them," Dietrich said. "We didn’t know them.”
She said her side of the family is firmly in the "Democrats for Tim" camp.
Walz, a veteran of the Army National Guard who previously served as a teacher and a championship-winning assistant football coach before being elected to Congress and the governor's mansion in Minnesota, has been a target of right-wing opposition research ever since being named as Harris' running mate, but the hunt to find scandals to pin to him hasn't been going well.
In one of the most recent such opposition releases, Walz's brother, who is not supportive of his campaign, cited as an example of his lack of "character" the fact that he used to get carsick when he was a kid.