More Walz family members come out against Kamala Harris’s vice presidential nominee

In another awkward development for Kamala Harris, more members of her VP pick’s own family have come out against him.

More family members of Kamala Harris’s pick for the American vice presidency have come out in favour of Donald Trump, in an embarrassing blow for the Democratic candidates.

Tim Walz, currently the Governor of Minnesota, is running alongside his party’s presidential nominee, Ms Harris. They’re up against Mr Trump, the former president, and his pick for the vice presidency, Senator J.D. Vance.

Mr Walz grew up in a rural community in Valentine, Nebraska. He went on to join the National Guard and become a school teacher, before entering politics as a candidate for Congress in the early 2000s.

In the United States, rural areas typically vote overwhelmingly for the Republican Party, with cities leaning heavily towards the Democrats.

And that is reflected, it seems, in the Walz family.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

It previously emerged that Mr Walz’s brother, Jeff Walz, was writing posts critical of him on social media, saying he was “100 per cent opposed to all” of the Democratic vice presidential candidate’s ideology.

Jeff said he knew unflattering “stories” about his brother, and was weighing the privacy of his family against his desire to keep Mr Walz out of the White House. He also commented that he had considered formally endorsing Mr Trump.

“I’m torn between that and just keeping my family out of it. The stories I could tell. Not the type of character you want making decisions about your future,” he said of his brother.

Jeff has since told NewsNation he was trying to clarify his political views for other people in his life, and regretted posting them on a public platform like Facebook.

“It was a post that I made because I was getting a lot of feedback from my friends, old acquaintances, thinking that I was feeling the same way that my brother did on the issues, and I was trying to clarify that, just to friends,” he said.

“I used Facebook, which wasn’t the right platform to do that for.”

The brothers reportedly haven’t spoken to each other for eight years.

Tim Walz's brother, Jeff Walz. Picture: Facebook

Asked by NewsNation about the “stories” he’d hinted at, Jeff downplayed the drama.

“My little brother, when we were younger, we would go on family trips and in a station wagon. And the thing was, nobody wanted to sit with him, because he had car sickness and would always throw up on us” he said.

“That sort of thing. There’s really nothing else hidden behind there. People are assuming something else.”

Jeff isn’t alone, within the Walz family, in favouring the Republicans. A photo has now emerged of other relatives posing in T-shirts supporting Mr Trump.

The image was initially shared by Charles W. Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska, and has since gone viral among Mr Trump’s supporters on social media. It shows eight people wearing shirts that read “Walz’s for Trump”.

“Tim Walz’s family back in Nebraska wants you to know something,” Mr Herbster said, captioning the image.

Approached by The Daily Mail, a spokesperson for Mr Herbster said the people in the photo were related to Mr Walz through his great uncle (his grandfather’s brother). That makes them quite distant relatives, but relatives nonetheless.

More relatives of Tim Walz are supporting Donald Trump. Picture: Twitter

It’s been a rough few years for America’s prominent political families.

Mr Trump has a niece, Mary, and a nephew, Fred, who frequently speak out against him. In addition to that his sister, the federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, was once caught on tape saying her brother had “no principles”, was “cruel”, and could not be trusted.

Meanwhile independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who recently suspended his campaign and endorsed Mr Trump, has copped scorn from the rest of his famous family, who claim he’s betrayed the legacy of his father, Bobby Kennedy.

The elder Kennedy was a Democrat who served as America’s attorney-general in the administration of his brother, the assassinated former president John F. Kennedy.

Mary Trump wrote a book, published in 2020, which described Mr Trump as a “pathetic, petty little man” who was “ignorant, incapable, out of his depth” and “delusional”.

While it was certainly less than charitable towards her uncle, the book actually reserved its most scathing criticism for Mr Trump’s domineering father, Fred Trump.

“In a way, you can’t really blame Donald,” Mary wrote

Mary Trump. Picture credit: Peter Serling

She blamed Fred Trump for the death of her father, and Mr Trump’s brother, Freddy, who passed away at 42 after a years-long struggle with alcoholism – partly fuelled, in her view, by Fred’s contempt.

“The only reason Donald escaped the same fate is that his personality served his father’s purpose. That’s what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them towards their own ends, ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance,” she wrote.

“Fred destroyed Donald too, but not by snuffing him out as he did Freddy; instead, he short-circuited Donald’s ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion.

“By limiting Donald’s access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it.”

This week Mr Trump’s nephew, Freddy III, spoke out about his uncle’s controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery, claiming the former president “doesn’t give a s***” about dead members of the military.

“He just doesn’t. Donald believes in Donald,” he said.

Mr Kennedy’s latest feud with his family started late last month when he threw his support behind Mr Trump instead of Ms Harris.

“I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues,” Mr Kennedy said at the time, adding that, in meetings with Mr Trump, the pair had talked about forming a “team of rivals” which would let them “disagree publicly and privately” while also “working together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance”.

Bit of a change, there, from Mr Kennedy’s attitude as recently as May, when he said there were “no circumstances” under which he would join forces with Mr Trump.

“Our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches to governance, and our philosophies of leadership could not be further apart,” he said then.

RFK Jr. Picture: Olivier Touron/AFP

The Kennedy family released a statement in response to the endorsement.

“We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride,” RFK Jr’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, said in a statement immediately afterwards, also issued on behalf of fellow family members Kathleen, Courtney, Chris and Rory.

“We believe in Harris and Walz. Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear.”

Kerry subsequently slammed her brother during multiple TV interviews.

“I’m outraged and disgusted by my brother’s gaudy and obscene embrace of Donald Trump,” she told MSNBC, speaking to former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who is now a host for the network.

“And I completely separate and dissociate myself from Robert Kennedy Jr in this flagrant and inexplicable effort to desecrate, and trample, and set fire to my father’s memory.”

No one’s playing happy families in America at the moment, it seems.