Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he was shocked by Vice President Kamala Harris tapping Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, labeling the Democrats’ ticket “communist.”

Walz joined Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday night for the first rally of the Harris-Walz ticket and immediately went after Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). Trump was interviewed by “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning and asked to discuss the latest developments in the presidential race, telling the hosts that Walz is “a very liberal man, and he’s a shocking pick.” He added, “I could not be more thrilled.”

The former president said that Walz is “a smarter version” of Harris and is similar to Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). “There’s never been a ticket like this. This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately,” Trump continued.

The Minnesota governor has been criticized for his leftist positions, which include supporting gender procedures on minors, pushing for pro-abortion policies to such an extreme that “Nancy Pelosi asked me if I should tone it down,” and creating a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) council that labeled the U.S. as systemically racist.

Walz also oversaw the 2020 Minneapolis riots, which caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and attempted to shift the blame to city leaders for the slow response to quell the violence.

During her time as a senator, Harris was rated as the most leftist lawmaker in the chamber, according to a 2019 report card from GovTrack.

Trump’s VP pick, Vance, responded to the Harris-Walz ticket on Tuesday, telling reporters, “My view on it is it just highlights how radical Kamala Harris is. This is a person who listened to the Hamas wing of her own party in selecting a nominee. This is a guy who’s proposed shipping more manufacturing jobs to China, who wants to make the American people more reliant on garbage energy instead of good American energy, and has proposed defunding the police just as Kamala Harris does.”

WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI

Walz was also blasted by the Trump campaign, which referred to the Minnesota governor as a “West Coast wannabe” who “has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State.”

“While Walz pretends to support Americans in the Heartland, when the cameras are off, he believes that rural America is ‘mostly cows and rocks,'” said Trump campaign Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

CNN’s Van Jones said on Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris deciding to pick Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) to be her running mate and not Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) was about “caving” to far-Left voices within the Democratic Party that are anti-Semitic.

Jones made the remarks after being asked on the network about Harris’ decision not to go with Shapiro, who was viewed by many strategists as the strongest pick she could have made.

“The conservatives, the right-wing, the Republicans, they were chewing their fingernails down to the knuckle because they were afraid of a Josh Shapiro,” Jones said. “They were afraid of a Mark Kelly. They’re not as afraid of this new governor because they think they can define him.”

“Here’s the challenge you’ve got in this party, and people don’t want to talk about it, but we’ve got to talk about it,” he continued. “On the one hand, you have a lot of young people who are concerned about Gaza. You have a lot of Muslims and Arabs and others. They have not felt seen by the Biden administration. You start right here in that genocide joke that was building. And so those folks needed to have a candidate that they could feel comfortable with. This helps them in that regard.”

WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI

“But you also have anti-Semitism that has gotten marbled into this party,” he concluded. “You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot. But there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there. And there’s some disquiet now, and there has to be, how much of what just happened is caving into some of these darker parts in the party. So, that’s going to have to get worked out. It’s going to have to get talked through.”

WATCH:

Van Jones admits that Kamala picking Walz was her “caving in to some of these darker parts in the party” in terms of appeasing “anti-Jewish bigots” that have “gotten marbled into this party.” pic.twitter.com/UTspmYkFfF

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) August 6, 2024