Joe Walsh

Walsh wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s tariffs are a tax increase on middle-class Americans and are devastating to our farmers. That’s not a smart electoral strategy.”

Walsh supports school vouchers. He tweeted in July 2019: “School vouchers are the answer. Let parents choose where they send their kids to school. Force schools to compete for kids.”

Walsh described himself as a “big gun guy” at a Business Insider’s GOP event, according to the website. He said: "I believe in the Second Amendment, plain and simple. There’s no silver bullet to this issue.” At that same event, Walsh noted that he believed there should be background checks: “When I leave here in about an hour if I go to a gun dealer down the street and I want to buy a gun … I have to get a federal background check. It makes sense to me that if I buy that same gun at a gun show, I should have to undergo a federal background check. It makes the same sense to me that if I buy a gun online, I should have to undergo the background check. It makes similar sense that if I buy that same gun from a friend across town I should have got a background check.”

Walsh told PBS NewsHour: “We’ve got to get to a place … where Medicare and government-provided health care is always there for people in need, but the rest of the American people need to begin assuming the responsibility for the day-to-day costs of our health care.” He said: “We cannot, as a nation, afford to pay for, in essence, government-run health care for everybody.”

Walsh told PBS NewsHour: “The situation at our border now is a bigger mess than when [Trump] got elected.” Walsh told PBS he would be “tougher” on people who try to enter the US illegally, and that he would dedicate additional resources to processing asylum cases. “It’s our responsibility to hear those claims,” he said.