The Trump campaign and leading Republicans have launched their first attacks on Tim Walz, labelling him as “far left”, “dangerously liberal” and a “radical”.
Kamala Harris said she chose the Minnesota governor as her running-mate for “his convictions on fighting for middle class families”.
Donald Trump was quick to claim on social media, without evidence, that Mr Walz would “unleash HELL ON EARTH and open our borders to the worst criminals”.
JD Vance, Trump’s choice for vice-president, claimed that Mr Walz was on the “far left” of the Democratic party, and chosen because Ms Harris was a “radical herself”.
Mr Vance and other Republicans focused on Mr Walz’s response to rioting in Minneapolis over the murder of George Floyd in 2020, where he waited two days to deploy the National Guard.
Mr Vance said Mr Walz had “allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020”, a claim echoed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
“He sat back and let the city of Minneapolis burn,” said Mr DeSantis.
State officials say several nights of rioting in the Twin Cities destroyed several dozen buildings and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.
The killing of Mr Floyd by a police officer sparked nationwide protests over police brutality, with millions demonstrating peacefully. But some protests – in both Democratic and Republic-run states – saw looting, rioting and arson.
Mr Walz also faced criticism for a video from a White Dudes for Harris event last week, during which he said Democrats should not “shy away from our progressive values”.
“One person’s socialism is another person’s neighbourliness,” he said, prompting a backlash from Senate Republicans, who wrote in a post on X that Ms Harris and Mr Walz were the “most extreme ticket in history”.
Other prominent Republicans framed Mr Walz as a weak choice, and claimed he would boost Trump’s chances in November’s election.
“Tim Walz? What a relief,” Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway wrote on Twitter/X.
Trump and his allies have already attempted to frame Ms Harris as an “ultra-liberal” candidate on her own, attacking her handling of border security as well as the Biden administration’s economic policies.