Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was spotted on his daughter's Instagram page this week shortly after he and Vice President Kamala Harris were defeated by President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance in Tuesday's election.
"The Earth keeps spinning and we live to fight another day,' Walz's daughter Hope posted on her Instagram story along with a photo of a somber Walz, wearing a sweatshirt and cargo pants, holding and petting his cat.
The video is the first sighting of Walz since he appeared at Harris' concession speech on Wednesday at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
"Thank you Vice President @KamalaHarris for putting your faith in me, and selecting me as your running mate," Walz posted on X this week. "Campaigning at your side was the honor and privilege of my life."
Harris faced scrutiny even from some in her own party over her decision to name Walz, who many view as further to the left than she is, rather than a more moderate choice. Prominent Democrat Josh Shapiro, governor of the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania that Trump carried on Tuesday night, was viewed by some as a more practical choice.
"One of the things that are top of mind is the choice of Tim Walz as vice presidential candidate," Harris-Walz surrogate Lindy Li told Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich at Howard University. "A lot of people are saying tonight that it should have been Josh Shapiro. Frankly, people have been saying that for months."
Rob Bluey, president and executive editor of The Daily Signal, told Fox News Digital that Walz being added to the ticket was a significant error in judgment.
"Historically, vice presidents have little impact on a presidential candidate’s fate," Bluey said. "But in the case of Tim Walz, it proved to be a disastrous decision that doomed Kamala Harris from the moment she made it. Not only was Walz ill-prepared for the national spotlight and media scrutiny, but Harris passed over several better options. Given how little Americans knew about Harris or her policy positions, they were right to question her judgment on this big decision."
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Walz was heavily criticized on the campaign trail over questions about his honesty regarding his military service, ties to China, response to the George Floyd riots in 2020, and policy agenda as governor that several Minnesotans who spoke to Fox News Digital described as radical.
"The choice of Walz was only one of many disastrous mistakes but symptomatic of one larger problem — the Democratic Party leadership is too scared to say no to the hard-left progressive wing of the party," Julian Epstein, longtime Democratic operative and former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital.
"This hard left opposes commonsense solutions that Gov. Shapiro supports — charter schools, for example. Or defeating terrorists rather than aping their talking points and positions, which allow them to stay in power and rearm for the next genocidal attack," Epstein continued. "It’s the hard-left progressive wing that looks first to welfare and redistribution rather than economic growth, and to cultural extremism on migration and gender deeply out of touch with the American electorate. Walz was a really bad choice for sure, but their choice was part of a deeper problem."
