Tim Walz Is Lying About the Incident He Claims Drove Him to Enter Politics

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has had a storybook career. Congressman, governor, and now a vice presidential candidate, Walz's rise has been one for the books.

Make sure you look for it in the "Fiction" section.

Thread - The last sitting President to visit my hometown of Mankato, Minnesota was George W. Bush in 2004. As a high school teacher and football coach, I brought two fellow teachers' children to the speech as an educational experience. We were denied entry...

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 17, 2020

It was at this moment that I decided to run for office. While I had a passion for politics, I had never been overly involved in political campaigns, and many people thought that a high school teacher and football coach didn’t stand a chance.

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 17, 2020

Walz claimed he went to the rally as an "educational experience." The students, Matt Klaber and Nick Burkhart were, in fact, activists who had protested against George Bush earlier in the week with Walz and who protested outside the venue that day where Bush was to speak.

The students who accompanied Walz to the Bush rally were never taught by Walz. Klaber was a member of a local Democratic Party group. Both teens had convinced a local TV station to accompany them and Walz to catch the confrontation at the Bush rally on video.

“He was looking for an origin story,” Chris Faulkner, a former Bush campaign staffer in Minnesota in 2004 who worked the August rally, told the Washington Examiner. “And he made one up.”

There’s just one problem: This version of the political origin story for the Democratic vice presidential nominee, who is already facing “stolen valor” accusations over claims about his military service from combat veterans, contains significant inaccuracies.

For one, Walz was admitted into the Bush rally, according to a source familiar, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the August 2004 event. The two teenagers Walz arrived with, Matt Klaber and Nick Burkhart, were not his students, the Washington Examiner confirmed.

Moreover, the teenagers were barred from the event after a confrontation that made local news earlier in the week — leading to them initially being denied tickets.

Walz claimed he had never been involved in politics before the rally. In fact, he had participated in an anti-Bush rally a few days previously. 

The teens were initially denied tickets after they were heard making anti-Bish comments while standing in for the rally. The more we understand about this incident, the more it becomes apparent that the whole business was a set-up to make the local Republicans look bad and create martyrs to the cause out of two teen activists.

That day, as the trio waited in line, Bush campaign staffers told them that the Secret Service deemed Klaber and Burkhart a threat. Walz, in his retelling of the matter in 2006, said he was indignant. “As a soldier, I told them I had a right to see my commander in chief,” Walz said at a 2006 campaign event in Minnesota.

The Bush campaign staffers interrogated Walz and wanted to know if he supported Bush, according to Walz. But while the students were barred from the event, Walz was not, and walked right inside, one source said.

The sequence of events, as Walz tells it, inspired Walz to become politically involved. Days before the rally, Walz was already engaged in political protest.

While every politician who ever lived has embellished their origin story in some way, this is outright lying by Walz. Don't expect anyone to call him on it, of course. He's the "father" of our country and can never tell a lie.