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Tim Walz’s mom has broken her silence over the rift between Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick and his older, Donald Trump-supporting brother Jeff.
Darlene Walz confirmed to The Daily Beast on Wednesday that the relationship between the brothers is rocky – but said that she tries to stay out of the matter.
“I want to keep peace with all of them,” the mother of four said. “I think the best thing maybe, for me, is to just stay out of it.”
The two siblings have a difference of opinion when it comes to politics, with Jeff once donating to the Trump campaign in 2016 while his brother is now taking on Trump with Harris on the Democratic party’s ticket.
For Darlene, she said that she tries to avoid the topic of politics while visiting Jeff at his Florida home.
“We got along just fine,” she said.
Her Democratic VP candidate son is known for his liberal outlook and policies. He signed a bill into law last year in Minnesota, mandating that free sanitary products be available to all menstruating students in restrooms used by those in grades 4 to 12 across Minnesota schools.
The Minnesota governor also agreed to be the faculty adviser for his school’s first ever gay-straight alliance (GSA) in 1999 while working as a geography teacher at Mankato West High School.
Jeff, meanwhile, has been vocal about his support for Trump.
In Facebook posts from Friday, first seen and published by The New York Post, he said that he’s “100% opposed” to his sibling’s political ideology and even warned other social media users that he is “not the type of character you want making decisions about your future.”
He has since backtracked, telling NewsNation he regretted expressing his views on Facebook, and had done so to distance himself politically from his brother among people who know him.
“I was getting a lot of feedback from my friends, old acquaintances, thinking that I was feeling the same way that my brother did on the issues, and I was trying to clarify that just to friends,” he said. “I used Facebook, which wasn’t the right platform to do that for.”
He also conveyed sadness at being so distant from his little brother, saying “it’s too bad” they’ve grown apart and expressing hope that they can at some point in the future “disagree and still be civil brothers.”
This comes as seven of Walz’s extended family members posed for a photo this week wearing grammatically incorrect “Walz’s for Trump” shirts.
The image was shared by a family friend and then posted on X by Charles Herbster, a former Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska, where the Democratic vice presidential nominee grew up.
“Tim Walz’s family back in Nebraska wants you to know something,” Herbster captioned his post.
Trump also shared the photo on his Truth Social platform, writing: “Thank you very much, Jeff. It is a Great Honor to have your Endorsement. I look forward to meeting you soon!”
Darlene clarified that the people in the photo are “mostly second cousins,” related through her late husband James, and are from Nebraska, where she still lives in Butte, a small town in the northern part of the Republican state.
A life-long Democrat, Darlene said that she wants her son and Harris to defeat Trump and his own VP pick JD Vance in November.
She previously campaigned with her younger son when he successfully ran for Congress and reportedly helped him come up with his campaign phrase “Every town in Minnesota” when he ran for governor.
Darlene was also there when her son accepted his party's nomination for vice president at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago last month.
“Oh man, that was a blast,” she told the outlet. “It was wonderful.”
Walz has been a driving force behind the Democratic party’s ticket, with many praising Harris’s choice – who stands in stark contrast to his GOP rival, who has been trying to brush off several controversies since he joined Trump on the Republican ticket.
