Tim Walz has a problem with telling the truth. He lied about his military service, his record as governor, and his lack of immediate response to the George Floyd riots. He's had several other "lapses" in truth-telling that should raise eyebrows among the media "gatekeepers' who never quite get around to fact-checking "America's dad."
One of the biggest fibs he's repeated several times was his contention that he was in Hong Kong during the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. "I was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, when, of course, Tiananmen Square happened," Walz said in a June 2019 radio interview uncovered by CNN on Tuesday.
Walz could have stopped there, and most of us might have just accepted that he got the dates wrong. Instead, he just kept digging.
"Twenty years ago today, I was in Hong Kong preparing to go to Foshan to teach at Foshan No. 1 Middle School," he said during a congressional hearing on June 4, 2009. "To watch what happened at the end of the day on June 4 was something that many of us will never forget, we pledge to never forget, and bearing witness and accurate telling of history is absolutely crucial for any nation to move forward."
If you look really close at the Tiananmen "tank man," you can probably see that it's Walz standing in front of those PRC tanks.
The Trump campaign immediately struck, calling Walz "Tiananmen Tim."
Tiananmen Tim!
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) September 30, 2024
Funny they’re changing this now - we were planning on calling him out for this at the debate tomorrow night!
Anything else you want to fess up to, Tim??? https://t.co/NCHJyxd7n8
CNN also reported that Walz has exaggerated the number of trips to China. In 2016, he claimed he visited China 'about 30 times' and in a congressional meeting on China he claimed to have visited Hong Kong 'dozens and dozens and dozens of times.'
But the Harris campaign told CNN the number of Walz trips to China were 'likely closer to 15.'
Walz's misrepresentations of his travel overseas only add to questions about his comments throughout his political career, including misstatements about his rank in the National Guard and he and his wife's use of in-vitro fertilization to conceive his daughter.
During the debate, Walz gave a meandering, ultimately incoherent answer to why he "misstated" his being in Hong Kong while China's brutal crackdown on protesters was happening.
“This is about trying to understand the world,” he said.
No, this is about the difference between the truth and a lie, especially when the lie is told to buttress your political biography.
“My community knows who I am. They saw where I was at,” Walz said during the debate. “Look, I will be the first to tell you, I have poured my heart into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times, but it’s always been about that. Those same people elected me to Congress for 12 years.”
When pressed by CBS News’ moderators specifically about the discrepancy between his past comments and the media reports on his travel, Walz first said he “misspoke” on this.
“All I said on this was, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just – that’s what I’ve said,” he said, before adding, “I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in, in governance,” he said.
Nobody really cares about how honest and forthright your "community" thinks you are. It was a case of classic misdirection, which I'm sure he was coached to do before the debate.
Walz isn't the only politician who ever tried to insert himself into a great historical event. Joe Biden frequently claimed that he was arrested in South Africa protesting apartheid, despite the story being debunked on a regular basis.
Liars do what liars got to do.
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