On CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) was asked about the Democrats 'gaslighting the country' on inflation, immigration, and President Biden's ability to seek re-election.
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00:00So, we heard your former running mate, Kamala Harris, say she's not here to say, I told
00:04you so.
00:05Although, obviously, that's what she was saying about all the Trump chaos.
00:08We're seeing, I have to say, though, what does I told you so really mean here?
00:11I mean, people heard her message.
00:13They did not vote for her.
00:14She lost every battleground state.
00:16You yourself have criticized the Harris-Walls campaign for being too cautious.
00:20She may have told the American people, you know, she may have warned the American people,
00:24but she didn't do it compellingly enough to win.
00:30That is the absolute point.
00:31And look, when I criticize, I'm criticizing myself.
00:33I own this.
00:34I'm part of the ticket.
00:35And somebody has to come up with a strategy.
00:37I think this is exactly right.
00:39This is the thing.
00:40Look, Democrats, it was a good night in Wisconsin.
00:42I was over there.
00:43We saw that happen.
00:44Donald Trump's doing this.
00:45Just to be clear, nobody on the Democratic side is celebrating this, and those folks
00:49in the street are not celebrating that Donald Trump's making all these errors.
00:52I think what the vice president's saying is, that was pretty self-evident that he was going
00:56to do that.
00:57But I do think the challenge for Democrats, and this is, I think, a structural problem
01:01that's going to take a lot more thinking, why, with all of that out there, did they
01:05not think we were any better than that?
01:08And they didn't.
01:09And I'm very concerned with the folks who stayed home.
01:11And these are folks that I'll say once again, Donald Trump has identified their angst.
01:16They can't buy a house.
01:17They can't afford to get a good education.
01:19They're concerned that their economic future is so precarious it could slip out from under
01:24them.
01:25And half of Americans have $1,000 in savings.
01:28And I think, why was it not so compelling?
01:31It should have been a slam dunk for us to say, we're the party that cares about that.
01:35We're the party that's going to protect Social Security and Medicare.
01:38We're the party that thinks the ACA is a good start, but we need to do more on health care.
01:42And we didn't do that.
01:43So I'm concerned.
01:45Democrats do well in special elections and off-year elections.
01:48But the electorate that comes in presidential election years is different.
01:51When I was young, it was easy to know what a Democrat was.
01:53You stood with the working class in labor, Republicans were country club and for the
01:57rich.
01:58Today, you ask people, they don't.
02:00We have a 29% approval rating.
02:03It doesn't help us any that Donald Trump ends up with a 25% approval rating.
02:07We have to get back to the core issues that this is about making America prosperous and
02:12stable and innovative for everybody.
02:15Well, what do you make of the criticism that one of the reasons why your party was so resoundingly
02:18rejected last November is because Democrats were gaslighting the country, saying that
02:23inflation was not a big deal, heralding Bidenomics.
02:28Not only Biden, but Kamala Harris was heralding Bidenomics, pretending that there wasn't a
02:32problem at the border.
02:33And then fundamentally, this idea that President Biden was up for another four years of the
02:38job while Americans in poll after poll for year after year were saying he's too old to
02:44do the job.
02:45Your party stood against all of those things.
02:50Look, Joe Biden coming in and doing COVID and being a governor through COVID did a hell
02:56of a job.
02:57But I think one of the things that we didn't do was is we assume that we said, and it was
03:01true that we were going to have a soft landing in our economy was better than the rest of
03:05the world.
03:06Better for who?
03:07Better for the working class who was saying groceries were too expensive, as they are
03:11now and going up.
03:12They got to see us talk about things.
03:15Again, I go back to this.
03:16Don't talk about food insecurity or housing type of issues.
03:20Talk about people being hungry and wondering where they're going to live or about their
03:23children's future, about real security.
03:26And so I think your question is spot on.
03:28I think we got intellectualized on this.
03:31I think the fact of the matter is Joe Biden did soft land the economy.
03:34He did usher us through COVID.
03:37None of us are saying we should be soft on the border, but we allow a vacuum and Donald
03:42Trump fills it, the 800 pound gorilla, and their narrative starts to stick.
03:47And we look weak.
03:48We look weak like we don't care.
03:49We look like we could look, Jake, I'm not going to say, you know, we need to do is we
03:53need to just arrest people and ship them to El Salvador.
03:55No, we need to do invest the money on border.
03:57We need to make sure that we have the judges necessary to adjudicate things faster.
04:01We need to make sure if you're going to be in this country, you're legal and when you
04:04are, you're going to be uplifted, celebrated and part of this great American tapestry.
04:08We didn't do that.
04:09And then they, it fills them.
04:11They'll find the example that is horrific, where you have someone who's not here legally
04:15and they commit a crime that is horrific, but we don't do a good job of telling that.
04:19Don't you think your party needs to acknowledge that President Biden was not up for the job
04:24of running for reelection and that this was a major mistake?
04:28He made that decision.
04:30I know, but you all went along with the idea that he was up for it and he wasn't and everybody
04:34saw it and the country rejected it.
04:37Yeah.
04:38Yeah.
04:39Well, I look, history will tell us to go back on that.
04:42That very well could be the case, Jake.
04:44What I'm concerned about is learning from those lessons.
04:46I would hope we would never do it again, make a mistake, make sure we go through, get someone,
04:51but I don't know where it helps us going forward.
04:54I certainly am deeply concerned that Donald Trump is going to lead us down a horrific
04:57look.
04:58Thank God it's tariffs that he said, Donald Trump listens to no one.
05:01Remember Donald Trump has statements about, I don't think nuclear war would be that bad.
05:05I guess we're lucky that he went after tariffs instead of that route.
05:09We have an issue in this country that is going to impact us.
05:13And if there is not a loyal opposition, if there's not some soul searching on our side,
05:17if there's not.