Tim Walz is Kamala Harris's VP Running Mate
Update (Sunday August 10, 2024):
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I just want to you let you all know who read this that I wrote this post the day that the news broke that Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate. So, I really didn't know that much about him. I only saw that one interview he did a couple of weeks ago with either MSNBC or CNN. That was my only frame of reference for who he was before Vice President picked him as her running mate. But, now that I've seen more of him in action, now that I've learned more about him, I will concede that he is better than I initially gave him credit for in this post.
He is actually a decent running mate, and he's definitely way better than JD Vance. I am more convinced now that he could debate Vance, and really hit him where it hurts. He's a good speaker, and he's actually really funny, like he made fun of Vance for the couch incident 🛋️, which I don't entirely understand, but from what I understand Vance humped a couch 🛋️, like his stuck his dick in between the cushions and humped it as a way of masturbating.
That story resurfaced after Trump picked him as his running mate. Plus, from what I understand, Walz also likes drinking Mountain Dew, but unlike Vance, who drinks Diet Mountain Dew, he just drinks regular Mountain Dew, and he made fun of Vance about that too, like "I drink Mountain Dew too, but I don't drink that Diet stuff like JD. I drink the real deal."
I am still a bit salty that Mark Kelly wasn't picked just because I thought that he's a really cool guy ♂︎, and he would've been a really good running mate for Harris, and delivered the goods, and would've been a real force to be reckoned with for Trump and Vance. I mean, the main advantage that he brought to the table was that he was a veteran 🪖 and an astronaut 👨🚀, and he's the senator of Arizona, and Arizona is kind of a battleground state, but not really. Arizona is a staunchly red state, and it'll probably take a while for it to flip back to blue because it didn't always used to be red, used to be a blue state like my home state, New Mexico.
Plus I think that the Southwest is often ignored in national politics, like Arizona and New Mexico aren't really competitive states or swing states in presidential elections, and none of our politicians have ascended to the highest office in the land. Like, I don't think for example that we've ever had a president that was from New Mexico or Arizona.
The closest we got was John McCain, and while John McCain is still popular amongst Arizona Republicans, and he is a war hero despite what Trump said about him, there were plenty of reasons not to like McCain, there were plenty of things to criticize him on, and there were plenty of reasons not to vote for him. He didn't just lose the 2008 election because of Sarah Palin, although she did play a significant role in dooming his chances of winning, it was also because he really wasn't all that different from George W. Bush in terms of policy, particularly foreign policy.
He agreed with pretty everything Bush did during the War on terror, which was pretty much the United States 🇺🇸's entire foreign policy throughout the 2000s, and he even wanted to go further by invading Iran 🇮🇷. Something that most sane and rational people agree is a really bad idea. There's an infamous clip of him at a campaign event where he joked about bombing Iran 🇮🇷 that probably had a huge negative effect on his campaign, especially since by that point, the Iraq War 🇮🇶 was really unpopular amongst the majority of Americans 🇺🇸. So, a lot of people felt that if McCain was president, we would just get more of the same, and people wanted some real change.
I don't count Gary Johnson, who used to be the governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003 (that was still when he was a Republican), because he was a third-party candidate, running as the Libertarian Party's candidate, and he was never really a serious contender for the presidency, and was ultimately just a spoiler who helped Trump win. He was basically what RFK Jr. is in this current election.
It just seemed to me that Mark Kelly has never gotten his chance in the Sun ☀️ to either be president or vice president. Keep in mind, if anything bad happens to the president, the vice president automatically becomes president. If Biden dies, then Kamala becomes the president. So, if she had picked Mark Kelly, and if she were to be killed or incapacitated or put in any position where she couldn't do her duties, he could take her place and become the President of the United States 🇺🇸. And I don't know about you, but President Kelly sounds pretty cool to me.
But, I'm slowly starting to get over it, and I'm starting to accept Walz as Harris's running mate and the potential vice president if she wins, and even kind of embrace him now that I know more about him, and I see that he is actually a really cool guy ♂︎ in his own right, and is a guy who's worth being on our side. But, even if none of this were true, if Walz wasn't the guy ♂︎ that he is, and he was the boring guy ♂︎ I initially thought he was, I would vote for him and Harris because even a boring guy ♂︎ would be better than Trump or Vance, two complete idiots and fakers. But luckily, he is a cool guy, and he is a worthy asset to the Harris campaign.
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Well, this was unexpected, but I guess Tim Walz is Vice President Harris's VP Running Mate. Normally, I reserve the political news to the forewords on my reposts, but this is big enough to warrant its own post, though I probably won't post it until after my 100th post, and by then, it'll be old news. If that ain't an oxymoron. When I saw the news on the notification on my phone, my first initial reaction was "Walz? Really? She picked him as running mate?" And that's still kind of my reaction now.
I just don't see what Walz brings to the table, I just don't see what he adds to the ticket that Harris herself didn't already bring to the table. He seems like a pretty liberal guy, more than Harris in all honesty, like he's more further to the left than she is, and he's bit more headstrung and hardcore about left-leaning policy and left-leaning issues than she is, according to the political YouTubers I've listened to, but they aren't the most reliable sources of information. If anything, this VP pick will give Trump and Vance, the Republican Party, and the entire right-wing apparatus more than enough ammo to accuse the Democratic ticket of being a socialist one. I mean, they were probably going to do that anyway regardless of who she picked, but now there's a bit more legitimacy to those claims.
He's a good speaker from what I've seen of him in interviews, but I just don't know if he has the chops to debate Vance if he does indeed debate him. I mean, Vance isn't that great of a debater, but I don't know if Walz is any better. There is a good chance he might flop, and that would seriously hurt Harris's chances of winning the election, and as so many people in the pro-democracy movement have said, this is not an election that we can afford to lose.
I feel like, in order to debate somebody like Vance, you need someone who can really hit him where it hurts, someone who can really make him squirm, and expose him as the weak man ♂︎ that he is, the fake man ♂︎ that he is, since he's worn many faces over the years, all in the service of gaining more wealth and power. I mean, Vance went from being a hardcore Trump hater (he literally called himself a "Never Trump guy") to not just being a major Trump supporter also Trump's VP pick. And I just don't know if Walz is the guy ♂︎ to do that, if he has what it takes to put Vance in his place. Or maybe, Harris's debate skills will be so strong that it will circumvent or negate a potential lackluster debate performance from Walz. Or who knows? Maybe I'm wrong about him, and he'll knock it out of the park.
But, right now, I think this was kind of a lame choice in all honesty. Walz just seems like a really boring guy, a real snooze fest 🥱. I know everyone in the Democratic side or at least, the anti-Trump side of political YouTube will sit there and pretend like Walz was the best choice, but we all know the truth, he wasn't. He just doesn't seem like he'll enthuse people the way someone like Mark Kelly, Andy Beshear, or even Josh Shapiro, as much as I didn't like Josh Shapiro and really didn't want him to be the Democratic VP running mate.
And from what it seems to me right now, he adds very little to the ticket that wasn't already there other than being an old white guy ♂︎. Because you know? America 🇺🇸 is still kind of a racist country and also kind of still a sexist one too, and the only way that some people would accept a biracial black/Indian woman ♀︎ as president is if she was paired up with an old white guy ♂︎. That's why Obama picked Biden to his VP running mate in 2008 election, though that's not to say Biden wasn't qualified and didn't knock it out of the park as VP, he did.
But, that was the calculus around picking him as Obama's running mate, and that was the calculus behind picking Walz as Harris's running mate, a man ♂︎ who is just barely six years younger than Biden was when he became Obama's running mate. He's younger than Biden overall, but he's still old, 60 is still considered old, especially by my generation, Generation Z. Hell, a lot of Gen Z (especially those online) consider 30 to be old, can you believe that!? For the record, as a Gen Z in his mid-20s himself, I consider 30 to be young, hell yeah, 30 is young. What are you talking about 30 being old, get out of here!
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So, Walz is Harris's running mate 😒. Not my first choice or even my second, but he's what we got, and it's kind of too late to change it or reconsider, and it would be really stupid for the Harris campaign to change her VP running mate when we're about 14 days from the DNC (the Democratic National Convention). I don't want to give them any ideas because Democrats tend to panic whenever they don't get the reaction they want out of people, and try to change course as quickly as possible even when doing so would do more harm than good.
Their reaction to Biden's debate performance is a perfect example of this. They're very fickle and cowardly like that. And I can say that because I'm a registered Democrat, albeit a pretty new registered Democrat, I barely become a Democrat a couple of months ago back in June. This is in contrast to the Republicans, who never panic, at least not in the open for all to see, and who always stay the course even when doing so would do more harm than good. Like, nominating a 78 year old convicted felon who lost the last presidential election as your presidential nominee for this election, and then selecting a two-faced snake 🐍 who secretly hates him as his VP running mate.
I was really hoping that Harris would've picked Mark Kelly as her VP running mate, not just because he seems like a really cool guy, but he would've helped gain the Southwest vote (we are kind of ignored here in the Southwest, especially us New Mexicans), and gain support from the military veteran crowd and from the vital astronaut crowd 👩🚀, I'm being a little sarcastic with that last one, but I'm sure astronauts 👩🚀 would've loved to have one of their own as Vice President.
While others believe they did it out of spite, to punish Kuwait 🇰🇼 for resisting them and for asking the Coalition to help them out, and also hurt Kuwait 🇰🇼's oil production 🛢️ after the country was liberated and the war was over. Whatever the motive behind this move was, it did nothing to stop the Coalition forces from evicting the Iraqi forces 🇮🇶 from Kuwait 🇰🇼, and seriously damaging their combat effectiveness for many years to come.
You know, until the US 🇺🇸 led another coalition to invade Iraq 🇮🇶 and topple Saddam Hussein from power in 2003. The Iraqi military 🇮🇶 was so left in tatters after their humiliating defeat in Operation Desert Storm that when the invasion came, they were pretty much a shell of their former selves. They had significantly diminished in size and strength, they were no longer the fifth largest army in the world like they were at the time of Desert Storm, they were completely outmatched and were unable to put up an effective resistance against the Coalition led by the US 🇺🇸.
Not even the Republican Guard Corps could do anything to resist the US 🇺🇸, the UK 🇬🇧, Australia 🇦🇺, and Poland 🇵🇱, since Poland 🇵🇱 participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq 🇮🇶. To what degree and in what capacity, I do not know, but Poles 🇵🇱 were involved. But anyway, the regular army and the Republican Guard were of so little consequence that the Coalition kind of just ignored them as they took town after town, city after city, and made their way to Baghdad. Most of the troops in the regular army and the Republican Guard surrendered as soon as they were confronted by Coalition troops.
Ironically, the greatest threat that the Coalition had to face during the invasion was not the regular Iraqi army 🇮🇶 or the Republican Guard, but was the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary group that was set up by Saddam Hussein to protect his regime from internal dissent following the 1991 uprisings, and was led by his eldest son, Uday Hussein, who mostly used it as his personal bodyguards and used to enrich himself and smuggle weapons and money 💵.
Uday was really corrupt, and a huge asshole just like his father. And his father actually got mad at him for using the Fedayeen for his own personal gain instead of for what it was actually meant for which was regime security, and gave control of the organization to his younger son, Qusay Hussein, who was the one leading it when the invasion took place. The Fedayeen used guerrilla tactics against the Coalition, and were ultimately the ones who put up the best fight against the Coalition on the Iraqi side 🇮🇶. They would heavily influence the tactics used by the Insurgency that would take shape during the occupation.
After the invasion, the US 🇺🇸 and its coalition allies, the UK 🇬🇧, Australia 🇦🇺, and many others occupied Iraq 🇮🇶, and during the occupation, the Iraqi military 🇮🇶 as it was before under the Ba'athist regime was dismantled, and was replaced with a completely new Iraqi military 🇮🇶 that largely supplied with American arms and equipment 🇺🇸 and was trained by American advisors 🇺🇸. But not without some growing pains first, as many soldiers and officers in the old Iraqi military 🇮🇶 joined the Insurgency after the US 🇺🇸 disbanded it as a part of de-Ba'athifying Iraq 🇮🇶. A decision that was criticized for inflaming the situation, and making things a lot worse in the country.)
I guess Walz could gain the veteran vote too since he was in the National Guard, but it's nothing compared to Kelly's military record. I mean, the man ♂︎ served in the Gulf War for crying out loud, America 🇺🇸's crowning achievement in the past 33 years as far as military campaigns are concerned. I'm pretty sure Walz didn't do that.
Plus, I think Kelly would've done a pretty good job debating Vance if there are any Vice Presidential debates this election cycle. But, I get it. They didn't want her to be paired up with a bald short guy. Politics, especially electoral politics, is all apart performance and appearances just as if not more than it is about actual policy. Because Americans 🇺🇸 are just that superficial. But come on guys, I thought we liked our short kings.
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But, if not Mark Kelly, then I thought Andy Beshear would've been a really good choice. Not just because I felt that he had the chops to debate Vance, and really put him in his place since Beshear is the governor of Kentucky, he's from the Appalachia region, and is more authentically Appalachian than Vance could ever hope to be, and could've gained that support from that demographic.
He could've gained the Southern vote, and pulled some of the people away who would've normally voted Republican otherwise. Plus, it would've been cool to have two Gen X candidates on the Democratic ticket. I mean, Mark Kelly is Gen X, but he's an older Gen X, and Andy Beshear is just a little bit younger than him. But, Beshear dropped out of the veepstakes a long time ago. He wasn't even in the top three.
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Either way, even with an underwhelming VP pick (in my opinion), I'll still vote for Kamala Harris. Because voting for her is way better than voting for Donald Trump or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which is pretty much the same as voting for Trump since you're basically just throwing you vote away, and letting Trump pick it up from the trash. That's why no one likes third-party candidates here in America 🇺🇸 because with the way our system is set up, with it being a two-party system, third-party candidates are just spoilers that siphon votes from one of the two main candidate to the other. Usually, from a Democrat to a Republican.
That's part of the reason why Bill Clinton won the 1992 election, because Ross Perot was running, and he helped take votes away from George H.W. Bush (Bush Sr.), which was one of the few times a third-party candidate helped a Democrat win. It's also a big reason why George W. Bush (Bush Jr.) won the 2000 election (besides the Supreme Court handing it to him after the results were disputed) because Ralph Nader ran as a third-party candidate, and took votes away from Al Gore.
And I'm sure that people blamed both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein for spoiling the election for Hillary Clinton, and helping Trump win, because they both ran as third-party candidates with Johnson running for the Libertarian Party and Jill running for the Green Party. I don't entirely think they're to blame for why Trump won and Hillary lost. I also think Hillary just wasn't a good candidate in of herself (she kind of just the wrong candidate at the wrong time), but they did contribute.
This time, RFK Jr. knows that running as a third-party candidate, he'll be a spoiler, and will take votes away from one of the two presidential candidates from the two major parties. Him and Trump are quite literally in cahoots, trying to ruin the Democratic candidate's chances of winning. It used to be Biden of course, but now it's Harris. There's evidence of Trump and RFK Jr. working together, trying to jeopardize the Democratic side's chances of winning the 2024 election. A woman ♀︎ running for the RFK Jr. campaign was filmed at a secret event saying that the reason why he's even running at all is to spoil the election, and help Trump win.
Then, later on, another video surfaced of RFK Jr. talking to Trump on the phone while on speaker (this was days after the failed assassination attempt on Trump's life), where Trump was essentially trying to sweet talk RFK Jr. into dropping out in exchange for a cabinet position in his administration if he wins. Or something like that, I don't know the full details of that. RFK Jr. hasn't dropped out, probably because he and Trump recognize that it would be better for him to stay in race rather than drop out.
But, Trump is still offering him a cabinet position in his administration if he wins, as a favor for helping him win by taking votes away from the Democrats. He offered him a job as the Director of the Department of Health and Human Services, which if you know anything about RFK Jr. at all, you know why that prospect is terrifying 😰. Of course, it's unknown whether this strategy, this little scheme that Trump and RFK Jr. have cooked up, will even work because at this stage in the election, we just don't know which candidate RFK Jr. hurts the most electorally.
Which candidate will he take votes from? Trump or Harris? Remember, when Perot ran in 1992, it was the Republican candidate that he hurt more than the Democratic one. So, maybe a similar thing in this election with Trump, with RFK Jr. hurting him more, and taking votes from him rather than Harris. This strategy of theirs may have worked when Biden was the Democratic candidate, but he's not anymore, Harris is, and Harris is a pretty popular and well-liked candidate, at least for the time being. Just as popular as Bill was when he ran for the first time in 1992.
But, we don't know until Election Day draws closer. Plus, RFK Jr. is really a weird guy in of himself. He's just as weird as Trump in all honesty. There's no way I'd ever vote for him. So, for it's Harris all the way, even if I don't like her Vice Presidential pick. Even if the Democratic side and everyone in the pro-democracy movement is all gushing over Walz 🙄.
I am so glad that Harris didn't pick Josh Shapiro though. I know a lot of people like Shapiro, but I didn't think he would've been a good choice at all, I think he would've been the worst possible choice that she could have went with. It would be as bad as Trump picking Vance to his VP running mate. I just think that Shapiro would've brought a lot of baggage that would've seriously hurt the campaign. He's become quite a controversial figure since Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, there's a scandal that he's wrapped up in, or he's accused of being wrapped up in. Whether or not the accusations are true, I don't know. Either way, it's not a very good look.
He's aggressively pro-Israel 🇮🇱, and has not shown any sympathy or very little sympathy towards the Palestinian cause 🇵🇸 or towards the Palestinian plight 🇵🇸 inside of Gaza. He's been pretty supportive of Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the war, and supportive of what the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces 🇮🇱) have been doing in Gaza. He even sent police toward to shut up the protests 🪧 against the war on college campuses in his state. some of these police crackdowns turned violent as did others around the country on the college campuses where these protests 🪧 were taking place.
Maybe, pairing him up with someone like Harris who is more sympathetic to the suffering of the Palestinians 🇵🇸 would've balanced this out, but I do think if Harris picked him, she would've lost the support of a lot of progressives, especially young progressives. The Palestinian issue 🇵🇸 is a huge stickler for them.
Anyone who doesn't support the Palestinians 🇵🇸 or doesn't publicly say that they care about Palestinian suffering 🇵🇸, and supports Israel 🇮🇱 and supports Netanyahu in any way was someone who they wanted to stay as far away from as they could. Whether Walz is any better about the Palestinian issue 🇵🇸 or not, I have no idea. I assume he is because he's a bit more left-leaning than Shapiro is, and if there's anything I've learned in the past two years, it's that the further left you are, the more pro-Palestinian 🇵🇸 you tend to be.
Plus, she would have lost the Arab-American vote 🇺🇸, which is a vital vote believe it or not, especially in Michigan, which has the largest Arab-American population 🇺🇸 out of any state in the country. Not to mention that there's still plenty of antisemites in this country who not vote for Harris if she had a Jewish man ✡️♂︎ as her Vice Presidential running mate. That had to be apart of Harris and her campaign's calculus when they chose not to pick him, you know it.
The only reason why I think people wanted Shapiro to the VP running mate and thought he was a viable candidate was that they thought that he could help her win Pennsylvania, which is a major swing state, a major battleground state. Because you know, he's the governor of Pennsylvania.
A lot of people were saying up until Harris made her decision that Pennsylvania was the key to winning the White House, and that if she won Pennsylvania, she would win the election. If she failed to Pennsylvania, she'd lose the election. Whether Walz will have the same effect, and will help her win swing states like Pennsylvania is yet to be seen.
I just hope that he's good on the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦. I hope that he supports Ukraine 🇺🇦, and recognizes the threat Russia 🇷🇺 poses to Europe, and will help do anything and everything he can to make sure that Ukraine 🇺🇦 wins the war, and defeats Russia 🇷🇺. The Palestinian issue 🇵🇸 maybe a stickler for Gen Z progressives, but for me, the Ukraine issue 🇺🇦 is the stickler. Being pro-Russia 🇷🇺 is a huge dealbreaker for me. If a politician expresses any pro-Russian sentiments 🇷🇺, then I will refuse to support them. Luckily, it's mostly Republicans who are pro-Russia 🇷🇺, Democrats tend to be a lot better on this issue than Republicans.
Which is funny because it used to be Republicans who were the best on Russia 🇷🇺 back when Russia 🇷🇺 was still the Soviet Union ☭, and the Cold War was still going on. It was easy for them because they could make it about opposing them communism ☭ in general which was something that they and their base get behind since they both hated communism ☭.
But ever since the Soviet Union ☭ collapsed, and the Russian Federation 🇷🇺 rose in its wake, the Republicans became softer and softer on Russia 🇷🇺 overtime, since you know, Russia 🇷🇺 was a capitalist country now. They had very little reason to be against it. But, once Trump took over the party, and reshaped it in his own image, the Republicans are now the pro-Russia party 🇷🇺. Now, it's Democrats who are the anti-Russia party 🇷🇺🚫, and are now the ones tough on Russia 🇷🇺 when the Republicans refuse to step up time and time again.
I also hope that he commits to defending Taiwan 🇹🇼 if need be. I know that the US 🇺🇸 has had this strategic ambiguity about Taiwan 🇹🇼 for many years, and I know that the geopolitical community likes to pretend that the US 🇺🇸 still does. But ever since Biden did that one press conference where he said that the US 🇺🇸 would indeed defend Taiwan 🇹🇼 if China 🇨🇳 attacked it, that strategic ambiguity went out the window. Going back to it won't work. The cat's already out of the bag 🐈.
So, I think presidents and vice presidents from here on out need to make it clear that an invasion or blockade of Taiwan 🇹🇼 by China 🇨🇳 would be unacceptable, and that if things ever came to that, they would defend Taiwan 🇹🇼 with the full might of the US military 🇺🇸 as well as help from a coalition of its closest regional allies like Japan 🇯🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, and the Philippines 🇵🇭.
While also stressing that the US 🇺🇸 wishes to preserve the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, and does not seek Taiwanese independence 🇹🇼. Though, that one's just kind of an obligation to calm the nerves of the geopolitical class here in the West. None of those reassurances that the US 🇺🇸 doesn't want Taiwanese independence 🇹🇼 and does want to preserve the status quo to the degree that it can has not actually worked on China 🇨🇳. The Chinese 🇨🇳 will just assume the worst about America 🇺🇸, and will just say that America 🇺🇸's interfering in China 🇨🇳's internal affairs by speaking about the Taiwan issue 🇹🇼 at all. No matter what the Americans 🇺🇸 say or do, or don't do.
The truth is that the Chinese 🇨🇳 do not care about the status quo at all, they do not want to preserve it, they want to end it. They want to reunify Taiwan 🇹🇼 with China 🇨🇳, which obviously completely goes against the status quo. Or at least, that's what they say in their rhetoric to their demographic audience and to their simps in the West. Whether or not they actually mean it is another story. The Chinese 🇨🇳 have cultivated to this new wave of nationalism within the country under Xi's leadership, and the one thing that Chinese nationalists 🇨🇳 want above all else is Taiwan 🇹🇼.
You know? So that China 🇨🇳 can regain the last bit of territory that it lost during the Century of Humiliation, and their empire will be complete. Like I've said before, China 🇨🇳 without Taiwan 🇹🇼 is a country, China 🇨🇳 with Taiwan 🇹🇼 is an empire. They'll have complete supremacy over the entire Pacific Ocean, and will be in a perfect position to drive the US 🇺🇸 out for good. Since they view Taiwan 🇹🇼 as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier." I know that the pro-China people 🇨🇳 will say that Douglas MacArthur was the one who coined that term, but the Chinese government 🇨🇳 fully believes that too, that Taiwan 🇹🇼 is an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and that it is their ticket to gaining Pacific primacy.
With Taiwan 🇹🇼 under their control, they'll be able to bypass the Strait of Malacca, which was major choke point that could seriously affect China 🇨🇳's maritime trade in the event of a conflict. In all honesty though, if China 🇨🇳 did somehow gain control over Taiwan 🇹🇼, I fully believe that they would just turn it into a military installation, like they would just pepper the entire island with naval bases. Just like what Russia 🇷🇺 did to Crimea after they annexed it.
But, we aren't going to let that happen. The US 🇺🇸 will stand by Taiwan 🇹🇼's side no matter what, and will not let China 🇨🇳 take it over. That's why I hope that if Harris and Walz win, that her and Walz make it clear that they stand by Taiwan 🇹🇼 and will defend it if need be, just like Biden did.
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