Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) outed himself as a diversity hire on Monday, telling the Harvard Kennedy School forum he was chosen to be former Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate to create a “permission structure” for white, rural men to vote for the Democratic ticket.

“I could code talk to white guys — watching football, fixing their truck, doing that, that I could put them at ease,” Walz said. “I was the permission structure to say, ‘Look, you can do this and vote for this.’”