Walz, Tim

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      Tim Walz Rally Is Livestreamed on Twitch in Pitch to Young Voters

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      Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign bridged the real world with World of Warcraft on Wednesday, livestreaming Gov. Tim Walz’s rally in Arizona via Twitch, while a Twitch streamer played the role-playing game and provided commentary about his rally.The Republican Party has made inroads with young men, and this stream was an attempt by the Harris campaign to court voters to the Democratic ticket. This was the first time the Harris campaign has livestreamed gameplay from its Twitch account, which was created in August, and roughly 5,000 viewers were tuned in. Wired first reported news of the livestream.Both Ms. Harris’s campaign and that of former President Donald J. Trump have sought out nontraditional media platforms to reach voters who may not engage with mainstream outlets.Preheat, a Twitch streamer and World of Warcraft player with about 50,000 followers, hosted the stream from the Harris campaign’s account and encouraged the viewers to vote for her.The screen was split, with Mr. Walz’s rally in Tucson on the left and gameplay on the right.The stream mimicked a tactic used to gin up visual interest in short-form video content, such as putting gameplay from Subway Surfers, a mobile game, side by side with something else. The Harris campaign has used this trick, posting a TikTok in which Subway Surfers gameplay was placed next to a clip of Mr. Trump discussing the overturn of Roe v. Wade.Preheat occasionally butted in with commentary on the game or the election.“Project 2025? Not good, very weird,” Preheat said about the conservative playbook Democrats often criticize as he attacked a boss in World of Warcraft. Later, he spoke over Mr. Walz’s speech, wondering about his character: “Wait, am I dying?”Mr. Trump, for his part, held a livestreamed interview with Adin Ross, an online streamer popular with conservative young men, at Mar-a-Lago in August. The interview attracted more than 500,000 viewers. During the event on Kick, a streaming platform, Mr. Ross — who had been banned from Twitch for “hateful conduct” — gave Mr. Trump a Rolex watch and a Tesla Cybertruck emblazoned with a decal of Mr. Trump raising his fist after the attempt on his life in July.Politicians on livestreaming platforms are a relatively new phenomenon. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a Democrat, has her own Twitch account, and in 2020 she streamed gameplay of “Among Us” to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people while encouraging viewers to vote.During the 2020 presidential campaign, both Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Trump used Twitch accounts to livestream campaign events. Twitch banned Mr. Trump’s account after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but reinstated it this year. More

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      Tim Walz Calls for Abolishing the Electoral College, Going Beyond Harris

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      Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Tuesday called for abolishing the Electoral College as a means of electing American presidents, reiterating a position he has articulated in the past while he and Vice President Kamala Harris are in the heat of a campaign for the White House.Twice during campaign fund-raisers on the West Coast, Mr. Walz said he would prefer that presidential candidates did not have to focus on a few political battlegrounds and could instead focus on winning votes from across the country.“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a, we need a national popular vote,” Mr. Walz told donors at the Sacramento home of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. “So we need to win Beaver County, Pa. We need to be able to go into York, Pa., and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nev., and win.”Abolishing the Electoral College is generally a popular position with voters but is something that would either require a constitutional amendment or more states agreeing to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.Mr. Walz’s support of the position — in deep-blue West Coast states no less — with less than a month before Election Day risks rocking the boat for the Harris campaign as it tries to deliver a message focused on economic concerns, abortion rights and the threat of former President Donald J. Trump.Teddy Tschann, a spokesman for Mr. Walz, said that Ms. Harris’s campaign did not support abolishing the Electoral College.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Rally in Michigan Dominated by More False Statements

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      Former President Donald J. Trump held a rally on Thursday in the key battleground state of Michigan that was notable mainly for his continued false statements and exaggerations on a number of subjects as varied as the 2020 election and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.In the roughly 85 minutes that Mr. Trump was onstage, he repeated a pattern of untrue assertions that have characterized many of his events as the 2024 presidential race heads into its final weeks. The crowd of supporters in Saginaw County, which he narrowly lost four years ago, included Mike Rogers, the former Michigan congressman and the Republican candidate for Michigan’s open Senate seat, and Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican Party chairman.Mr. Trump reiterated his familiar false claim that he had won the 2020 election and made no acknowledgment of new evidence that was unsealed against him on Wednesday in the federal election subversion case. He also said his campaign was up in all polls in every swing state, while several public polls show close races and Vice President Kamala Harris leading narrowly in a number of battlegrounds.Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the state of funding at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that the Biden administration had stolen disaster-relief money allocated to the agency to give to housing for undocumented immigrants so they would vote for Democrats.He cast electric cars as a threat to the auto industry, while at the same time praising Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive who has endorsed his candidacy and featured him prominently on X, the Musk-owned social media platform.Michigan was one of a handful of swing states where Mr. Trump and his allies tried to overturn his defeat in 2020 through a series of maneuvers that included breaching voting equipment and seeking to seat a set of fake presidential electors. Some of his supporters have been criminally charged in the state, where Mr. Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator this year.Mr. Trump spent time in his speech taking satisfaction over his choice of running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, whose debate performance this week was applauded by many.“I drafted the best athlete,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Vance. The audience — several thousand supporters at a recreation center at Saginaw Valley State University, roughly 100 miles north of Detroit — cheered.And he mused, at one point, that instead of being on a beach in Monte Carlo or someplace else, he was running for the presidency again. “If I had my choice of being here with you today or being on some magnificent beach with the waves hitting me in the face, I would take you every single time.”Overall as of Thursday, Ms. Harris led by two percentage points in Michigan, according to The New York Times’s polling average, 49 percent to 47 percent. The vice president is scheduled to return to the state on Friday, campaigning in Detroit and Flint. More

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      Walz, Appealing to Muslim Voters, Says War in Gaza ‘Must End Now’

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      Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, on Thursday made a direct appeal to Muslim voters, decrying “staggering and devastating” destruction in Gaza and saying that the war between Israel and Hamas should be brought to an immediate end.“This war must end, and it must end now,” Mr. Walz said in a three-minute video address to the virtual “Million Muslim Votes: A Way Forward” event, which was hosted by the group Emgage Action.Mr. Walz said Vice President Kamala Harris was focused on ensuring that “Israel is secure, the hostages are home, the suffering in Gaza ends now, and the Palestinian people realize the right to dignity, freedom and self-determination.”The remarks, while brief, represented an effort by the Harris campaign to reach Muslim Americans who are angered by the Biden-Harris administration’s approach to the Middle East, have long been targeted by former President Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric and policies, and are struggling with their choice in this year’s election.Emgage Action, focused on building Muslim American political power, has endorsed Ms. Harris despite significant discontent among many Muslims over the White House’s support for Israel, which is now fighting in both Gaza and in Lebanon.Mr. Walz spoke to Emgage Action from his home in Minnesota and did not take questions. On the campaign trail, he has been disrupted by vocal pro-Palestinian protesters at rallies in Phoenix, eastern Pennsylvania and elsewhere.In an illustration of the broad and unwieldy coalition that the Democratic ticket is trying to hold together, Mr. Walz’s appearance came on a day when Ms. Harris campaigned with former Representative Liz Cheney, an anti-Trump Republican who has urged Mr. Biden not to withhold arms for Israel. Ms. Cheney’s father, the hawkish former Vice President Dick Cheney, has said he is also planning to vote for Ms. Harris.Mr. Walz spoke nearly a year after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s staggering response in Gaza, and during a week in which the Middle East seemed to have entered into a long-feared wider war.The conflicts are reverberating within Muslim and Jewish communities in battleground states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania.In Michigan, some Arab Americans voted “uncommitted” during the Democratic primary this year when President Biden was still the Democratic Party’s candidate, issuing a protest vote against Mr. Biden’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza.The Uncommitted National Movement, the national group that organized major protest efforts, has since said it would not endorse Ms. Harris, though it has also urged a vote against former President Donald J. Trump and warned against third-party votes. More

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      Walz Spoke of Gun Violence Affecting His Son. Here’s an Account of the Shooting.

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      At Tuesday’s debate, Gov. Tim Walz said that his son, Gus Walz, witnessed a shooting at a community center. A volleyball coach said Gus helped other young players to safety.Gov. Tim Walz has spoken before of a shooting last year at a recreation center in St. Paul, Minn., that he said had an impact on his teenage son, Gus. But in the vice-presidential debate with Senator JD Vance of Ohio on Tuesday night, Mr. Walz went further in saying that his son witnessed the shooting, which left one teenager seriously wounded.On Wednesday, a volleyball coach who played a central role in the response that day described what he, Gus and others experienced in the frightening moments after they had heard gunfire outside.The coach, David Albornoz, said he ran to investigate, while Gus, a team captain and an assistant coach on a boys’ volleyball team, helped guide young people in the gym to a safe location when many thought a mass shooting was occurring.“We heard the gunshots,” Mr. Albornoz said. “You hear the screaming. I had no more information than what I gathered.”The shooting, which was propelled into the national spotlight when Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance discussed how they would address gun violence in the country, was widely reported in St. Paul at the time. It took place in January 2023 outside the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center, part of the Oxford Community Center, one of the largest and busiest facilities in the city’s parks and recreation system. It is also across the street from Central High School, where Gus is a student.According to several court documents, the 16-year-old victim, JuVaughn Turner, and some of his friends were outside when a young woman got into a dispute with an employee at the recreation center, Exavir Binford.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vance and Walz’s Battle of the Network Co-Stars

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      In what could be the last prime-time showdown of the 2024 campaign, the supporting players performed against type.If a presidential election is a TV series — and partly it is, like it or not — then the vice-presidential debate is usually a departure episode: an installment that briefly shifts focus to a couple of side characters. It might be memorable or forgettable, but it is generally skippable.Tuesday’s debate between Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was a bit different. With only Kamala Harris having committed to an Oct. 23 debate proffered by CNN and Donald J. Trump having thus far declined, it may well have been the last big prime-time moment until election night.It was not, however, a bombshell-packed season-ender. The change in cast produced a change in style, in a spirited but often surprisingly collegial debate whose attacks were largely aimed offstage, at the leaders of the ticket.This was not the debate one might have expected from these candidates, each chosen in part for his media presence. Mr. Vance has been combative in TV interviews, embodying the trolling spirit of Mr. Trump’s most extremely online surrogates. Mr. Walz shot to fame on the strength of his cable news appearances and quirky viral videos, playing the down-to-earth happy warrior who mocked opponents as “weird.”Neither performed to type on the CBS stage. Mr. Vance, who can be cutting and snide in TV interviews (and has been notorious for insults like “childless cat ladies”), answered smoothly and kept mainly cordial to his opponent. Mr. Walz, while peppering his answers with folksy touches — “My pro tip of the day is this” — spoke in a nervous rush, with fewer flashes of “Coach Walz” pep.A decade of Trump has conditioned us to think of debates as rounds of Mortal Kombat, with dire rhetoric and imagery to match. Here, there was a lot of “I agree” and “I think this is a healthy conversation” amid the factual disputes and prepared critiques of the top of the ticket. You might briefly have forgotten this was America in the year 2024.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Walz Says He ‘Misspoke’ About Being in Hong Kong During Tiananmen Square Protests

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      Asked by a debate moderator on Tuesday why Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota had said that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in June of 1989, when he had in reality been in his home state of Nebraska, Mr. Walz said he was “a knucklehead at times.”“All I said on this was, I got there that summer, and misspoke on this,” Mr. Walz added, when pressed to explain why he has maintained, for years, that he was in Hong Kong during the anti-government demonstration and entered China shortly afterward.Mr. Walz tried to dismiss the misstatement as insignificant, saying he sometimes gets “caught up in the rhetoric.” He then pivoted to assert that his work as a teacher, congressman and governor was evidence that his community trusted his record despite his missteps.Mr. Walz has long said that he was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, the day that Chinese soldiers killed hundreds of protesters in Tiananmen Square. He has said that he entered mainland China shortly after, even as others chose not to travel there, because he wanted to forge ahead with his yearlong teaching stint in the country — framing it as a courageous act.“My thinking at the time was, what a golden opportunity to go tell, you know, how it was,” Mr. Walz told the podcast “Pod Save America” in February. “And I did have a lot of freedom to do that. Taught American history and could tell the story.”But Mr. Walz was not in Hong Kong. He was in Nebraska until that August, when he left for China, according to news reports from the time. The timeline of his trip was first questioned by Minnesota Public Radio on Monday. His campaign did not provide an explanation.Republicans have pounced on the news, pointing to it as another of a series of exaggerations and misstatements Mr. Walz has made, both large and small, that have surfaced since he was named Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate.Those include a comment he made in 2018 about “weapons of war that I carried in war” as a member of the National Guard, when he never served in combat. He has also implied that he and his wife used in vitro fertilization to start their family. In fact, the couple used a different treatment, intrauterine insemination. More

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      Exchange on Climate Change Shows Gulf Between Vance and Walz

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      The devastation that Hurricane Helene wreaked across the South last week thrust the issue of climate change to the forefront of the vice-presidential debate early in its first hour, quickly demonstrating how the two major parties diverge when it comes to the threat posed by climate change.Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, said that people were “justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns,” a position that might seem at odds with his running mate, who recently called the focus on the environment “one of the greatest scams.” But Mr. Vance dismissed as “weird science” those who say that carbon emissions are causing climate change.He added that he and Mr. Trump wanted “the environment to be cleaner and safer.” And he said the climate crisis would be solved by growing American manufacturing.“You’d want to reassure as much American manufacturing as possible, and you’d want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world,” Mr. Vance said, asserting that overseas manufacturing and energy production had a greater carbon footprint.The United Nations has said that “the manufacturing industry is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.”Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, responded by noting that in the past Mr. Trump had called climate change a “hoax,” before pivoting to policies passed by the Biden administration.Mr. Walz called Mr. Vance’s depiction of manufacturing a “false choice” and pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act, saying that investments in electric vehicles and solar energy had resulted in new U.S. jobs.“We are seeing us becoming an energy superpower for the future, not just the current,” Mr. Walz said. “And that’s what absolutely makes sense.”At the end of the exchange, Norah O’Donnell, one of the moderators, offered a closing comment: “The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the Earth’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate.” More