This report from Washington Examiner reporter Gabe Kaminsky offers us two possible insights into the Kamala Harris campaign. One: They have done a terrible job at vetting for Harris' most important decision of the campaign. Or two: They did an excellent job at vetting and this really shows the values Harris will bring to the presidency.

I pray that it's Option One, but I suspect that it's Option Two.

According to Kaminsky and his research, Tim Walz has repeatedly hosted a Muslim cleric who praises Hitler, as well as including him in his 2019 state address. Asad Zaman has also recently praised the October 7 massacre and atrocities as a legitimate expression of Palestinian grievances:

The imam, Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, joined other Muslim leaders in May 2023 for a meeting about mosque security with Walz’s gubernatorial office in Minnesota. Zaman also spoke at a May 2020 event to call for peaceful protests with the governor during the riots in Minnesota sparked after George Floyd’s death. In April 2019, the cleric delivered an invocation before Walz’s state address — just months after Zaman called for an end to a government shutdown at a press conference with Walz in January 2019.

In other words, the ties between Walz and Zaman are not just a coincidence of scheduling. Zaman appears to be one of Walz' go-to figures when he wants a Muslim perspective, which of course matters in a state with a significant Muslim population, as the Twin Cities has. Having an ecumenical and comprehensive approach to policy is not the issue here, but rather the choice of advisers Walz makes for that purpose. 

For instance, if Walz chooses advisers who think Adolf Hitler got a bad rap and that the Jews are evil, that goes to both judgment and ecumenism, no?

Zaman, meanwhile, has used his Facebook page over the years to share official Hamas press releases, blog posts on antisemitic websites slamming Jews, and, in one 2015 instance, a link to a piece on a website for a pro-Hitler film called The Greatest Story Never Told. The propaganda movie was released in 2013 and is a favorite among antisemites and QAnon conspiracy influencers, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Kaminsky has more from the ADL about Zaman, so be sure to read the rest of his report. Zaman also Has Deep Thoughts on the rape, slaughter, and kidnapping committed by Hamas on October 7. He's in favor of it:

Zaman, who is from Bangladesh, said on Oct. 7 of last year that he “stands in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli attacks.” That day, which saw 1,200 Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists, he also shared an image of a Palestinian flag on Facebook in response to a post by Yusuf Abdi Abdulle, director of the Islamic Association of North America, declaring that “Palestine has the right to defend itself.” The Biden-Harris administration, Abdulle wrote in the post, was “on the wrong side of history” in “supporting the extremist Zionist regime and its illegal settlements.”

Nor is this the only association Walz has with radical anti-Semitic figures in the Muslim community. Earlier this week, the Free Beacon's Chuck Ross had explored Walz' relationship with Hatem Bazian, although this looks less consistent than Walz' connections to Zaman:

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, appeared at the "Challenging Islamophobia" conference, hosted by CAIR's Minnesota chapter on March 28, 2019, at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul. Walz gave introductory remarks at the event and announced the formation of a civil rights office to address Islamophobia in the state, which has the largest population of Somali Muslims in the country.

Photos of the conference show Walz posed with Hatem Bazian, an anti-Semitic scholar who has for years defended anti-Israel terrorist activity. Bazian is the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, the group behind many of the pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic rallies across college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. The group's George Washington University chapter projected the slogan "Glory to Our Martyrs" days after the attack. Bazian also founded Students for Justice in Palestine's parent group American Muslims for Palestine, an influential anti-Israel organization under investigation in Virginia for allegedly financing terrorist activity.

This is starting to look like a pattern, but especially so with Zaman. And it's a pattern that would have been fairly easy to discover in any normal vetting process. That prompts the question that we started with: Did Team Kamala fumble the vetting process, or is this exactly what they wanted in a running mate?

Consider this in light two developments this week. First, Harris snubs Josh Shapiro as a running mate, despite the obvious help he could provide in winning Pennsylvania, where he has a job approval rating of 61%. While Democrats have offered a blizzard of excuses for that decision, the fact remains that the progressive Left pushed back hard on Shapiro for his support of Israel, and almost certainly because he's Jewish. Second, Harris then plays footsie with the pro-Palestinian "Uncommitted" activist leadership on a potential arms embargo on Israel. 

Now ask this: Did any other candidate on the Veepstakes short list have this level of cred with the radical pro-Palestinian activists that Harris and Biden pandered to ever since October 7? If not, it's difficult to see this as a mere coincidence created by a vetting failure on Eric Holder's part. It looks more like a deliberate choice -- and a very clear signal that Harris and Walz will turn American foreign policy in the Middle East in a radical direction.  

Or put more succinctly in one of my favorite poems, set to music by my favorite performer, it's all about the company Walz chooses -- and Harris, too. And the pig got up and slowly walked away ...