Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz joined other Democrats outside the Republican National Convention on Wednesday to defend President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
The meeting came as former President Donald Trump’s new vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), was scheduled to speak Wednesday night.
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Walz, along with other lawmakers, highlighted and spoke out against Trump and Vance’s abortion plan for 2025. During their speeches, all speakers argued that Trump and Vance’s abortion plan would include a nationwide abortion ban and threaten access to IVF and birth control.
Walz also opposed Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate, calling him the Heritage Foundation’s “Frankenstein’s monster.”
“It’s the perfect Frankenstein’s monster that the Heritage Foundation has created,” Waltz said. “I read it (Vance’s book): Hillbilly Elegy) I don’t really like it because I come from a town of 400 people. I had 24 kids in my graduating class, 12 of them cousins. I know a thing or two about small towns, and I know his dismissive disdain for them. It was decades of policies against people like him, not any cultural prejudices people held, that destroyed so many of our small towns.”
Walz reiterated his support and hope that Biden will be re-elected in November.
“We have the most pro-union, pro-worker president in the history of this country, and I say that as a union man,” Walz said. “So when Joe Biden talks about building this country from the bottom up, from the middle class, it’s a story about unions, it’s a story about individual freedom, it’s a story about addressing our biggest problems, and it’s a story about taking care of our smallest Americans.”
Waltz said the Biden-Harris team has delivered on all of its promises.
But Walz wasn’t the only Minnesota lawmaker at the Republican National Convention. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) took the stage Tuesday night and took a very different stance.
Governor Walz’s speech is expected to highlight President Trump and Vice President Vance’s plans for dealing with abortion through 2025, which he claims include a nationwide abortion ban and threaten access to IVF and contraception.
Emmer spoke about what the House Republican majority has done to block Democratic policies and said November will give Republicans an opportunity to do more, telling the Milwaukee audience that 2024 will be the year Minnesota votes Republican for the first time in decades.
“Be prepared, because when we expand our majority, flip the Senate, and send Donald J. Trump back to the White House, we will no longer be maintaining the status quo, we will be moving forward,” Emmer said.
RELATED: Emmer predicts Minnesota will go for Trump in prime-time convention speech
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS chief political reporter Tom Hauser will continue his 2024 election coverage from Milwaukee for KSTP-TV through the conclusion of the convention on Thursday. For more political news, click here.
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