Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz left many viewers of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate questioning if they heard him correctly when he said he’s “become friends with school shooters” — a statement that prompted immediate backlash from the father of a shooting victim and others.
“Walz became friends with school shooters?” right-wing talk radio host Megyn Kelly posed to her followers on X.
“Did I just hear that?!” U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said in her own post seeming to be flabbergasted by the remark, which urged GOP pollster Frank Luntz to say the line “may be the worst line in any 2024 debate.”
The questionable statement came as Walz tried to prove his gun-toting credentials as “an NRA guy for a long time."
ALSO READ: Is this the October Surprise?
“I’m of an age where my shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice,” he said during the debate moderated by CBS’ Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan. He added though that he believes that “there’s a capacity to find solutions on this that work – protect the Second Amendment, protect our children – that’s our priority.”
But it was still not enough to stop the firestorm from spreading across social media.
"My daughter was killed in the Parkland school shooting,” Andrew Pollack wrote in a social media post. “It’s absolutely abhorrent that Tim Walz has befriended school shooters. Disqualifying.”