Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says Democrats need to take a page from President Donald Trump’s own playbook.
“Maybe it’s time for us to be a little meaner,” the former vice presidential hopeful said during a speech at the South Carolina Democratic Party’s annual convention in Columbia, South Carolina. “Maybe it’s time for us to be a little more fierce because we have to ferociously push back on this.”
“When it’s a bully like Donald Trump, you bully the s--t out of him,” Walz added.
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Walz said a more aggressive stance on Trump will leave Republicans on the defensive.
“What they don’t want to do is stand toe-to-toe and punch back with someone who’s calling [Trump] out,” he said.
The governor also had some choice words for his fellow Democrats during a separate address at another state party conference in Anaheim, California on Saturday.
Acknowledging that he’s perhaps “the last person to lecture” the party on losses given his and former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump and Vice President JD Vance, Walz said he’d recently been told by a political researcher that the Democrats have behaved like “a deer in car headlights” post-election.
“You see the car coming at you, but you go ahead and stand there and you get hit by it anyway,” he added. “Nobody votes for roadkill.”
Walz went on to say Democrats had “strayed from our North Star” by failing to persuade voters they are champions of the working class. As a result, “We lost to a grifter billionaire giving tax cuts to his grifter billionaire buddies.”
While the Minnesota governor has not given any clear indication he’s eyeing his own run for the presidency in 2028, he told The New Yorker in a podcast appearance in March that he would “certainly consider” the possibility if he thought “I could offer something.”
As Democrats remain divided as to who might be best placed to challenge Trump in three years’ time, Walz has remained firmly in the limelight in the months since Trump took office, headlining a series of town halls across the country as well as speaking at events in a number of Republican districts where Democrats lost by a thin margin last year.
