Tim Walz's family endorses Trump? Truth behind viral photo

'Walz's for Trump' took over the Internet on Wednesday after a photo of eight members of a family, told to be the family of Tim Walz, Kamala Harris' running mate, went viral with the claim that they all are supporting Donald Trump in the November election. People in the photo were wearing blue t-shirt with 'Walz's for Trump' written on it. But as the photo went viral, social media users claimed that the photo was AI generated -- created by the Republican campaign.On Truth Social, Donald Trump shared a post about the photo and thanked Jeff for the 'endorsement'.
A community note on X said everyone in the photo has four fingers in the badly made AI image. But Rod Edwards, a political operative, said the photo was genuine and the people in it were related to Walz through his paternal great-uncle. He said the members in the photo got overwhelmed by the attention and hence didn't reveal their their identities.
The photo became viral and believable as Tim Walz's older brother Jeff is opposed to Tim and is a known Republican supporter. 67-year-old Jeff said he is 100% opposed to Tim's ideology. He also said he would be open to publicly endorsing Donald Trump but is in two minds about dragging the family into politics.
"The stories I could tell, Not the type of character you want making decision about your future," he said.



As Republicans rejoiced at the revelation as they found something in counter of Trump family members' opposition to Trump, Jeff said he is a Republican but he doesn't want to influence the general public. “It wasn’t my intent, it wasn’t our intent as a family, to put something out there to influence the general public,” Jeff Walz told NewsNation.
“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,” Jeff Walz said. “I used Facebook, which wasn’t the right platform to do that. But I will say, I don’t agree with his policies.”
On "stories I could tell", Jeff toned it down and said he meant childhood stories like Tim had a car sickness and no siblings liked to sit with him -- nothing malicious.
“Nobody wanted to sit with him, because he had car sickness and would always throw up on us, that sort of thing,” Jeff Walz said. “There’s really nothing else hidden behind there. People are assuming something else. There’s other stories like that, but I think that probably gives you the gist of it.”