Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz joked about his “interesting” first week as Kamala Harris’ running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket and criticized Donald Trump’s background on Wednesday during a Denver fundraiser that collected $3 million for the campaign.

“This week has been interesting,” Walz told roughly 150 attendees in the backyard of the 33,000-square-foot Phipps Mansion, owned by Democratic megadonor Tim Gill. “That’s a Minnesota word, ‘interesting’ — so you Minnesotans know, it has multiple meanings.”

He recounted being selected by Harris last week and then soon being put on a plane to a rally in Philadelphia — where he was told: “Here, you’ve got 45 minutes to read this speech off the teleprompter.”

“Perhaps I neglected to tell you,” Walz recounted to laughs and cheers, “I’ve never used a teleprompter in my life.”

The fundraiser was part of Walz’s first solo trip since joining the Harris ticket, a three-day, five-state swing. During his 15-minute in Denver in the early afternoon, Walz praised Harris’ “politics of kindness” and joked with Gov. Jared Polis, his former congressional counterpart and baseball teammate.

He also criticized Trump, the Republican nominee, drawing a contrast between Harris’ background — both as a prosecutor and as a former McDonald’s employee — and the former president’s.

Walz said he recently asked labor leaders in California if they could see Trump making a McFlurry. He paraphrased a Harris rally line, saying the vice president had gone after “fraudsters” and “predators,” adding: “We know who that might be.”

He said there was “no safety net” when speaking in front of the large crowds that are common on a presidential campaign trail.

Polis, who’d introduced him, chimed in: “Are you saying they’re not all AI?”

That was a reference to a false claim Trump made in recent days — that the Harris campaign had used artificial intelligence to inflate crowd sizes in a picture from a recent campaign stop in Michigan.

“I assure you, in Detroit, that wasn’t AI, and I’ll also assure you that every one of the ballots they’re going to cast will not be AI,” Walz replied, to cheers.

Trump was recently in Colorado, making a stop in Aspen Saturday during a multistate Mountain West swing that he said raised $28 million. Since Harris picked Walz, Republicans have focused their attacks most heavily on aspects of his more than two decades of National Guard service, but little was said about the topic at the Denver fundraiser.

The $3 million raised for the Harris Victory Fund on Wednesday was announced by Gill. Also in attendance were former U.S. Reps. John Salazar and Ed Perlmutter, current U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and former state House Speaker Alec Garnett, now Polis’ chief of staff.

Walz spoke broadly about Democratic priorities and ideals — like supporting “common-sense gun legislation” and addressing climate change and poverty — though he provided few specific policy proposals.

Polis said he’d told Walz not to spend any campaign cash on winning Colorado, which has turned reliably blue in recent years and went for Biden by 13.5 percentage points over Trump in 2020. Polis said Harris and Walz’s presence on the ticket would be enough to support Democrats’ down-ballot efforts, meaning to preserve a state House supermajority and win a similar margin in the state Senate.

Still, Walz urged attendees to keep working in the 83 days that remained until Election Day.

“Sleep when you’re dead,” he said.

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Originally Published: August 14, 2024 at 4:26 p.m.