MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A sister of the Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz says she doesn’t recognize the people wearing “Nebraska Walz’s for Trump” T-shirts in a photo making the rounds on social media. It turns out they are distant cousins.
The photo shows eight smiling people in navy blue pro-Trump shirts under a sign that reads “Trump 2024 – Take America Back.” The photo was eventually reposted by former President Donald Trumpwho wrote on his platform Truth Social: “I am very honored by your support. I look forward to meeting you soon!”
The photo was first posted on X by Charles Herbster, a former Nebraska gubernatorial candidate who was endorsed by Trump in the 2022 campaign. Herbster’s spokesman Rod Edwards said the people in the photo are cousins of the Minnesota governor, who is now Kamala Harris’s running mate.
“The family in the picture are the descendants of Francis Walz, the brother of Tim Walz’s grandfather,” Edwards said. “They are all Walzes and their spouses.”
Francis Walz’s descendants confirmed their relationship with Tim Walz in a text message to the Associated Press.
“Shortly after Governor Tim Walz was named the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee, our family got together. We had T-shirts made to show our support for President Trump and JD Vance and took a group photo. This photo was shared with friends, and when asked for permission to publish the image, we agreed,” the written statement said.
“The picture is real. The shirts are real. We are the Nebraska Walz family and we are related to Governor Tim Walz, our grandfathers were brothers. The message on the shirts speaks for itself: ‘Nebraska Walzs for Trump.'”
Walz’s sister, Sandy Dietrich of Alliance, Nebraska, said she suspects they may be people from that branch of the family. Dietrich and Walz’s father, James Walz, died of lung cancer in 1984 when the future congressman and governor of Minnesota was still a teenager. His father was a school superintendent in Valentine, Nebraska.
“We weren’t close to them. We didn’t know them,” she said.
Dietrich declined to comment on her distant cousins’ opposition to her brother, calling herself and her family “Democrats for Tim.”
“I know who I’m voting for. That’s all I can control,” she said.
But Tim Walz’s other living sibling does not support his candidacy.
In the last few days The New York Post reported on Facebook comments from the governor’s older brother, Jeff Walz of Freeport, Florida, in which he said of his younger brother: “The stories I could tell. Not the kind of person you want making decisions about your own future.” The 67-year-old also wrote that he was “100 percent against his entire ideology” and had considered supporting Trump, the Post reported.
In comments published on Wednesday by NewsNation, Jeff Walz said he was still upset when he heard on the radio that his brother would be Harris’s running mate, but he had no intention of influencing the political debate and did not want to get involved in anyone’s campaign.
Jeff Walz told NewsNation that he and the 60-year-old governor had not spoken since the funeral of their younger brother, Craig Walz, in 2016, aside from a brief phone call last month about their mother. He told NewsNation that what he meant by “stories” in his post were from their childhood.
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“Nobody wanted to sit with him because he was sick and throwing up, stuff like that,” Jeff Walz said. “There’s really nothing else hidden there. People assume something else. There are other stories like this, but I think this probably gives you the gist of it.”
He also told NewsNation that he would not make any further statements on the matter. He did not immediately respond to messages left by the AP on Wednesday.
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Associated Press writers Randy Herschaft and Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.
