Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz used his sharpest language on the campaign trail Thursday in speeches since both former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Speaking at a rally in Erie, Pa., Walz quoted the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, saying that “whenever Donald Trump talks about America, he talks about America.”
Shapiro has said several times that Trump “talks” about the country, which Walz acknowledged when comparing the Pennsylvania governor.
Walz, who was first elected governor of Minnesota in 2018, went on to say that Trump got his “butt kicked pretty hard and lost” in the last election and that he “violently tried to overthrow our democratic government.”
When reached for comment, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Walz “set his state on fire during the riots and has destroyed its citizens since he became governor. He and Kamala Harris are weak, failed and dangerously liberal.”
Trump has falsely claimed for years to have won the 2020 election, despite admitting in a podcast episode released Tuesday that he lost the race “by a whisker.” He has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges related to efforts to overturn the election results and has consistently denied wrongdoing.
Walz also referred to the Republican Party as a “cult” on Thursday.
“This country needs at least two viable political parties,” he said. “We don’t need one, a cult on the other side, we don’t need that.”
The Minnesota governor’s comments come less than a week before the first conversation between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, are scheduled to debate each other on Oct. 1.
Democrats and Republicans are hotly contesting Pennsylvania, a state President Joe Biden turned blue in 2020 by a narrow margin — 50% of the vote to Trump’s 48.8%. In 2016, Trump narrowly defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, receiving 48.6 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 47.9 percent.
National polls show Harris and Trump locked in a tight race, much of which is likely to come down to a handful of battleground states like Pennsylvania.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
