Supporters of former President Donald Trump have invented a rumor that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who was recently chosen to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, drinks horse semen.
The false claim appeared on Tuesday after Walz referenced a joke involving Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), during a speech at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Walz quipped that he couldn’t wait to debate Vance “if he’s willing to get off the couch,” a nod to an online joke that suggests the Ohio senator previously made love to a couch.
Although opponents of Vance are well aware that the couch claim is false, the joke has stirred extreme outrage among conservatives given its popularity.
And now, in an apparent attempt to come up with a joke of their own, conservatives are claiming that Walz was once hospitalized after ingesting horse semen.
Tim Walz horse meme
In a post to a pro-Trump subreddit on Tuesday, a screenshot of a fake fact-check from the Associated Press suggested that “Walz once had his stomach pumped because he drank a gallon of” horse semen.
The rumor quickly made its way to other social media platforms, where users argued that they should further spread the false claim in order to harm Walz’s image.
In one example, a user appears to have mixed up the claim by stating that Walz instead had sex with a horse.
“We should lie about our enemies more,” one user said. “I’m hearing rumors that Tim Walz had sex with a horse???”
A reporter for the right-wing outlet Newsmax also pushed the claim in a manner that suggested it was actually true.
“The story about Tim Walz and a horse is beyond repulsive,” Yitz Friedman wrote. “No words. Truly, a sick man.”
Of course, it wasn’t long before the memes came as well. Photoshopped images of Walz drinking the animal fluid were plastered online.
“Kamabla found herself an absolute freak,” one user said above the doctored image.
Trump fans already seem convinced that the joke is a home run and will undoubtedly derail Walz’s growing popularity.
“They wanted to play around with the couch nonsense, well they are about to find out how viral this whole internet thing truly is,” a user named Based Patriot X said. “And who that internet actually belongs to.”
Yet it is unlikely that the rumor will catch on in the same way the couch joke has. While the couch joke is lewd, images of Vance next to a couch are hardly offensive. Sharing images of Walz drinking horse semen, however, is much more graphic and unlikely to catch on outside right-wing internet users.
It remains unclear whether Vance or Trump will pick up on the rumor from their base and attempt to utilize it against Harris and Walz.
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