Family members of three people who will appear near the top of voters’ 2024 ballots have spoken out against their own kin. If you’re looking for something that epitomizes our polarized political age, that’s surely it.
But as Donald Trump and his allies seek to play up supposed political discord in Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz’s family, they might want to slow their roll a bit.
If family members are any gauge of a politician’s character, Trump fares much worse than Walz. The familial attacks lodged at Trump and his new ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are simply on a different level — both compared to Walz and historically.
To recap: This weekend we learned that Walz’s brother Jeff Walz wrote on Facebook that he was “100% opposed” to his brother’s ideology. He said Tim Walz is not the “type of character” who should be making major decisions for the country. “The stories I could tell,” Jeff Walz added.
Then a photo emerged purporting to be other members of Walz’s family wearing “Nebraska Walz’s for Trump” T-shirts.
Tim Walz’s family members in Nebraska are voting for Trump. pic.twitter.com/CmBrx1APMm
— Matt Wolking (@MattWolking) September 4, 2024
“His brother endorsed me, and the whole family endorsed me,” Trump claimed Wednesday night on Fox News. Fox hosts and right-wing media have played up the stories.
Trump’s claim is characteristically false, though; Jeff Walz hasn’t endorsed Trump, and neither has anything even close to Walz’s “whole family.”
Even as Trump and his allies were highlighting the Walz family, the likelihood of true familial discord fizzled. Jeff Walz appeared on NewsNation and downplayed the supposed dirt he had on his brother, while saying he wouldn’t get involved in the campaign. We also learned Wednesday night that the “Nebraska Walz’s for Trump” were apparently distant cousins — so distant that Walz’s sister didn’t recognize them. (The AP reported they are descendants of Walz’s great-uncle.)
The resulting picture is of a politically opposed, estranged brother briefly stumbling into the national spotlight and just as quickly begging for the exits, and effective strangers who share a bloodline opting to be photographed opposing Walz. That’s not nothing, but it’s not close to what Trump claimed.
As notably, nor is it close to what Trump’s own family has said about him — or what Kennedy’s family has said about their estranged relative.
Both Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, and his nephew, Fred Trump III, have now written critical books about Trump and spoken out against his character in no uncertain terms.
Mary Trump in 2020 said Trump demonstrates “sociopathic tendencies,” while adding that the then-president is “utterly incapable of leading this country, and it’s dangerous to allow him to do so.” She not only opposed him but called for him to resign.
Fred Trump III more recently said Trump last year suggested that his nephew’s mentally and physically disabled son should be left to die to avoid further medical expenses: “He said, he doesn’t recognize you, let him die and move down to Florida.”
The siblings had visited Trump at the White House, but they ultimately decided to blow the whistle on him.
Mary Trump also recorded Trump’s sister, former federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, saying that Trump had “no principles” and that “you can’t trust him.” Fred Trump III now says he witnessed Maryanne Trump Barry writing an op-ed opposing her brother in 2016, but that it was never published. (Maryanne Trump Barry, who died last year, never publicly came out against her brother.)
The other big example this election cycle is Kennedy, who suspended his campaign recently and endorsed Trump but will remain on many states’ ballots.
Numerous members of Kennedy’s famous Democratic family, including no fewer than six siblings, denounced his independent campaign and backed the Democratic ticket. They cited his “deplorable and untruthful remarks” about covid, his vaccine conspiracy theories and “his poor judgment and tenuous relationship with the truth.”
It’s difficult to find comparable historical examples of the kinds of things family members have said about Trump and Kennedy.
There was a spate of this kind of thing during the 2018 campaign, but at a much lower level. Six siblings of Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) appeared in a campaign ad against him. Another candidate’s brother appeared in an ad against him. A candidate in Missouri was denounced by two of his children as a bigot. And the parents of the GOP Wisconsin Senate candidate quickly donated the maximum amounts to the Democrat he sought to unseat, shortly after the Republican entered the race.
One of the earliest female members of Congress, Rep. Coya Knutson (D-Minn.), lost reelection after her husband signed a public letter titled, “Coya, Come Home.” (The letter is believed by many to have been the work of political operatives.)
And back in 1920 — in my favorite example — presidential son Theodore Roosevelt Jr. campaigned for Republican Warren G. Harding even as Roosevelt’s cousin, Franklin, was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. By 1924, both FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt responded during Theodore Jr.’s run for New York governor by campaigning against him. Eleanor Roosevelt even traveled the state in a teapot-themed car in an attempt to tie Theodore Roosevelt Jr., whom Harding had appointed assistant secretary of the Navy, to the Harding administration’s Teapot Dome scandal.
A century later, candidates’ family members are making an increasing number of political splashes. It’s just that some ripples are a lot bigger than others.