Manchurian candidate? Marco Rubio thinks China ‘groomed’ Tim Walz

Florida’s senior Senator is warning that the Democratic vice presidential nominee may be compromised by being too close to America’s principal rival.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio posted to X that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “is an example of how Beijing patiently grooms future American leaders.”

“Decades later they get into positions of power, are portrayed as ‘experts’ by the media & push for policies that allow China to steal our jobs & factories & flood America with drugs,” Rubio asserted.

Rubio was responding to a Washington Post editorial that argues Walz’s “decades of China experience are an asset, not a liability,” a piece lauding his “35-year relationship with the Chinese people” and pushing back against unfriendly framings of the Democrat relationship with China.

“Since Walz’s selection, his critics have rejected such nuance. On Tuesday, conservative commentators criticized Walz for teaching a ‘CCP-approved course in China’ (he taught English at a high school in Guangdong province) and for getting married on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and visiting China on his honeymoon,” argued Josh Rogin.

Walz has yet to take media questions since entering the race, though any eventual interview may touch on these subjects.

Rubio, as followers of his career know, has been a hawk when it comes to the Cold War with China, urging his colleagues in Washington to take a more critical look at Beijing’s operations.

“In the history of the world, no country has ever invested so much money so fast in undermining and overtaking the United States. The Soviet Union didn’t have that money. No one else has ever done it. This is the biggest challenge we have ever faced,” Rubio said in 2023 during a Fox Business Channel interview with Maria Bartiromo.

Rubio said in a 2022 speech to the Heritage Foundation that China poses a specific threat to the American-centered world order.

“They believe in raw power,” Rubio said, decrying the “naive, bipartisan widely held belief” in recent decades that globalization could change that fundamental condition.”