Harris VP pick Tim Walz under microscope for response to 2020 George Floyd protests

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “They make an interesting tag team, because of course, Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020,” JD Vance, Walz’s rival on the GOP ticket, told Fox News on Tuesday. He ordered the Minnesota National Guard to start preparing Thursday morning which allowed them to deploy to both St. Paul and Minneapolis that evening, per the Mayors’ requests.” He also faulted city leaders like Frey, calling their actions an “abject failure.” open image in gallery People look at the charred wreckage of a building destroyed during last week's rioting which was sparked by the death of George Floyd on June 2, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota At the same time as he was beefing up the state response to the protests, he was also calling on fellow leaders to turn down the temperature, and criticizing Trump for tweeting “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” which many interpreted as a coded threat to protesters of all stripes. It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities,” Walz said a few days into the protest, announcing that many of those arrested were from outside of Minneapolis Some Republican state leaders argued that it was Walz’s liberal sympathies that slowed his decision to deploy the Guard, in what would eventually be the largest activation of state troops since WWII. “One of the city’s employees has just murdered someone in the most brutal fashion,” he said, “and for you to then pretend like you’re the victim and you’re under siege, to fire mace and tear gas and rubber bullets in response to water bottles being thrown — you have at that point 100 percent antagonized the situation,” Minneapolis city council member Jeremiah Ellison said in 2020.