Did Tim Walz Call Kamala a 'Prostitutor?' VP Pick Under Fire After Comments About Harris Leave Viewers Stunned

You’ve got to hand it to Tim Walz: normally, when he makes off-color comments, it’s intentional.

For example, during his debut speech as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Walz chose to make a distasteful joke about a fabricated internet rumor concerning Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, allegedly having had intimate relations with a couch—because, obviously, that’s exactly the kind of association you want to evoke when talking about someone potentially a heartbeat away from the presidency.

However, this time around, the Minnesota governor seems to have accidentally made an inappropriate remark.

As reported by WXMI, Walz made these comments while visiting Grand Rapids, Michigan—a city he claimed could play a pivotal role in determining the outcome of the presidential race.

Of course, much of the media coverage focused on the optimistic and positive aspects of his speech.

“This guy is stuck in the past,” Walz said about Trump. “[Harris] is focused on the future of this country, the bright future that each and every one of us gets to partake in.”

He continued, “What’s unforgivable is him stealing our joy. Kamala Harris is not only bringing solutions focused on you, but she’s also doing it with a smile and joy on her face.”

And then came the awkward part.

As Walz began praising Harris’ career, he made an unfortunate slip of the tongue while discussing her early years.

Kamala’s career, he said, “started — and I love this story — as a young prostitutor, Kamala Harris talked about going in that courtroom for the first time.”

You can sense from his stumbling speech afterward that Walz immediately realized his error — and it was a big one.

To provide some context — which the Harris campaign has tried very hard to bury — back in her twenties, Harris dated former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who was in his sixties at the time and also the speaker of the California Assembly.

Brown was a well-known figure in California politics, notorious for a string of relationships with women who were most certainly not his wife. (For clarity, it’s worth noting that Brown and his wife had been estranged since 1981, and she had seemingly given him free rein to engage in what some might call "extracurricular activities.")

As reported by USA Today, a 1994 Los Angeles Times article described Harris as Brown’s “frequent companion,” with some referring to her as Brown’s girlfriend. At the time, Harris was 29, and Brown was 60.

In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2019, Brown acknowledged that he “may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker.”

To her credit, Harris has acknowledged that her relationship with Brown was somewhat of a burden. According to USA Today, she called it an “albatross hanging around my neck,” primarily due to the patronage scandals and other corruption allegations Brown faced during his career.

“His career is over; I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing,” she said in a 2003 interview with SF Weekly while running for district attorney in San Francisco. “If there is corruption, it will be prosecuted.”

Notably, even though they had split up eight years earlier, Brown still supported her campaign.

In a letter to the Chronicle, Brown wrote, “I have also helped the careers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and a host of other politicians.”

However, to the best of our knowledge, he didn’t give any of them a BMW—which, reportedly, he did gift to Harris. Just putting that out there.

That being said, if every woman who had a relationship with Willie Brown ended up following Kamala Harris' career trajectory, California would be overrun with U.S. senators. Yet, it’s certainly helpful to have a powerful connection early in one’s career, even if it’s with a man so much older that someone once mistook Harris for his daughter, as reported by the New York Post.

In any case, it’s somewhat refreshing to see Tim Walz shock a crowd with an accidental gaffe for once. Finally, an inappropriate comment that wasn’t planned.