Republicans turned an incident involving Tim Walz walking into a dog park nearly three years ago into an attack on the Democratic vice presidential nominee this week, working to create an online narrative to portray Walz as a liar.
The insinuation was that Walz had somehow lied about the identity of his dog, Scout, by referring to two different dogs as his beloved pet in separate X posts. Social media users shared screenshots of the posts as alleged evidence that the Minnesota governor exhibits a pattern of deception, garnering thousands of likes, shares, and reactions on the platform.
In a post, From June 2022Walz is shown hugging a black dog. The caption reads, “Special happy birthday wishes to our favorite pup, Scout.” The second post, posted in October 2022, shows Walz next to a brown and white dog, with the caption: “No better way to spend a beautiful fall day than at the dog park. I know Scout enjoyed it.”
Walz’s supporters quickly fired back on social media. Showing posts Walz was playing with someone else's dog when he mentioned Scout in the caption.
This harmless post wasn’t the only reason used against Walz in recent days. he told a joke He was accused of lying about the amount of spice he puts in his food for talking about eating “white man's tacos” in a campaign video with Vice President Kamala Harris. Opponents have also objected to Walz describing himself as a former high school football coachHe said he was the defensive coordinator.
Political slander of such a trivial nature may not seem particularly harmful, but a flood of false and misleading claims can easily cause real damage in elections, according to experts. This is especially true when they go after a person like Walz, who is still in the race to win the election. Relatively unknown On the national stage, though, the fact that he's not at the top of the ticket could have less of an impact on the Harris-Walz campaign.
“It may seem minor, and in some cases that’s exactly what they do, but they’re trying to make a larger attack on the character that fits into a larger narrative that’s being built around this personality,” Emily Vraga, a professor who studies political misinformation at the University of Minnesota, said of the recent attacks on Walz. “It becomes a piece of the puzzle that they’re trying to assemble.”
He said the “sheer volume” of false claims could create the perception that there is some truth to them, even if voters don't believe every single one of them.
Nathan Walter, an associate professor at Northwestern University who also studies misinformation, agrees that misinformation doesn’t have to be significant to be harmful.
“The purpose is to attack someone's personality, and then these attacks really become like canaries in a gold mine, don't they?” he said. “So if he lies about his dog, if he lies about his great career as a coach, he probably lies about a lot of other things as well.”
Democrats have recently launched similarly superficial attacks on the Republican ticket, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and former President Donald Trump. branded the pairing as “weird”.
The attacks on Walz include trivial attacks as well as criticism about other inconsistencies. For example, earlier this month Walz attacked Vance, saying, “If it were up to him, I wouldn't be able to have a family because of IVF.” But his wife, Gwen Walz, released a statement last week revealing they had a child. Relying on a different fertility treatment This is known as intrauterine insemination, or IUI.
What to know about the 2024 election
Walz's military record has also faced strong scrutiny from the right wing. One such concern is that when speaking about gun violence in 2018, he presented himself as someone who has spent time in a war zone. “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in combat, are the only place those weapons belong,” Walz said. He said at that time,
Walz never served in a combat zone During his 24 years in the Army National Guard, he served in a variety of other roles. These included serving as an infantry and field artillery gunner, as well as deployments to Italy to support active duty forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Vraga described the superficial attacks as a “spaghetti approach,” in which Republicans are making lots of claims to see if they stick in place of a fleshed-out narrative, which meanwhile dominates online discussion. Furthermore, the idea that Walz is a liar “reflects this established worldview that we believe about politicians is that they are untrustworthy,” according to Vraga.
Even in the polarized political environment of 2024, where many people on all sides have strong beliefs that are unlikely to be changed by online name-calling, negative campaigning has the potential to turn potential voters away altogether.
“These kinds of attacks can be used to discourage voters, especially those who are not deeply involved,” Vraga said. “You start to feel like why bother with politics at all? It's so cheap.”