No one would ever accuse Kamala Harris or Tim Walz of being brilliant after hearing them speak. “Word salad” does not begin to do justice to whatever it is they let spring forward from their mouths or wherever those noises are emanating from. Let’s just say that they’d both be picked last if you were drafting a bar trivia team.
If you needed another example of what passes for intellect over on MSNBC, look no further than the Vice Presidential debate Tuesday night. While everything Walz said made less sense than the design of a platypus, let’s just dissect one question that should have been easy to address, but turned into a stream of verbal diarrhea scientists will never be able to make sense out of.
At issue was the lie Walz has told for years about how he was in Hong Kong for the Tiananmen Square massacre, which he was not. There was no reason for the lie, at least nothing practical. China is gigantic, Hong Kong is nowhere near Tiananmen Square and was controlled by Great Britain at the time, so it wasn’t even really part of China. But by putting himself near the mix, Walz was doing what he’s done his whole life – trying to get implied importance by proxy.
Just like the lies he’s told about his military service, Tim usually doesn’t come right out and say it. He implies the hell out of something knowing most listeners would draw a false conclusion off that. He didn’t lie, per se, he just helped people draw the wrong conclusion. Bill Clinton pioneered this.
When it was discovered that Walz was verifiably in Nebraska during the Tiananmen Square massacre, he should have had an answer chambered and ready to go about why he lied. Even a garbage answer would’ve been accepted by the Democrat moderators from CBS. But he couldn’t even do that.
Asked, “You said you were in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protest in the spring of 1989. But Minnesota Public Radio and other media outlets are reporting that you actually didn't travel to Asia until August of that year. Can you explain that discrepancy? You have two minutes,” Walz went off the rails immediately and tossed a 448 word salad of vapidity that was so devoid of intelligence that even light can’t escape it. My commentary will be in parentheses.
He started, “Yeah. Well, and to the folks out there who didn't get at the top of this, look, I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, town of 400. (Are people from towns of less than 400 people in Nebraska required to lie about stuff, or something? Otherwise, what does this have to do with anything?) Town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on, and I'm proud of that service. (What service? I rode my bike with friends till the streetlights came on, too, sometimes after. Am I entitled to some sort of medal or pension because of it? If so, I’d like to know.) I joined the National Guard at 17, worked on family farms, and then I used the GI bill to become a teacher. (The GI Bill doesn’t give people the ability to get any job they want, it pays of college so people can pursue whatever career they want. You can’t just show up and become a teacher by saying “I have the GI Bill!”)
“Passionate about it, a young teacher. My first year out, I got the opportunity in the summer of '89 to travel to China, 35 years ago, be able to do that. I came back home and then started a program to take young people there. We would take basketball teams, we would take baseball teams, we would take dancers, and we would go back and forth to China. The issue for that was, was to try and learn. (I know what each of those words mean individually, I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about when he strings them together like this.)
He went on to say, “Now, look, my community knows who I am. (What “community” exactly? The straight white guy community? As a member, I can honestly say I have no idea who he is. If he means something else he needs to clarify, since Democrats have reduced the word to mean gender, sexual orientation and race.) They saw where I was at. They, look, I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community. (Again, what “community” and how did he pour his heart into it?) 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. (It’s always been about Tim Walz being stupid, and he’s bragging about this?)
Continuing, he added, “Those same people elected me to Congress for twelve years. (What people? He went from talking about living in Nebraska to being elected to Congress from Minnesota without differentiating between the two. Is there some “community” that spans that wide of an area?) And in Congress I was one of the most bipartisan people. Working on things like farm bills that we got done, working on veterans benefits. (Most things Congress does are “bipartisan,” that’s a meaningless statement. “Popular” bills pass easily, larded up with pork. That’s the problem in DC, not something to brag about.) And then the people of Minnesota were able to elect me to governor twice. (Allowed to? Was that ability in doubt? Did the DUI he lied about open some question as to whether or not he’d be able to run?)
Getting close to finishing, he said, “So look, my commitment has been from the beginning, to make sure that I'm there for the people, to make sure that I get this right. (What?) I will say more than anything, many times, I will talk a lot. I will get caught up in the rhetoric. (Again, what? Is he saying he’s so stupid he get swept up in things and just starts spewing BS?) But being there, the impact it made, the difference it made in my life. (Being where? We’ve already established that you lied about being in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre, you were in Nebraska.) I learned a lot about China. I hear the critiques of this. I would make the case that Donald Trump should have come on one of those trips with us. I guarantee you he wouldn't be praising Xi Jinping about COVID. And I guarantee you he wouldn't start a trade war that he ends up losing. (This is stupid even for a stupid person.)
Concluding, he added, “So this is about trying to understand the world. It's about trying to do the best you can for your community, and then it's putting yourself out there and letting your folks understand what it is. (Huh?) My commitment, whether it be through teaching, which I was good at, or whether it was being a good soldier or was being a good member of Congress, those are the things that I think are the values that people care about.”
Sorry if your eyes crossed reading that or you now have a headache, but reading it rather than hearing it really exposes just how stupid the whole damn thing was. He talks fast--it can distract people from the reality that he’s just making stuff up--but he was just making stuff up hoping no one would remember the question when he finished.
Unfortunately for Timmy, the moderator did remember. And while she was perfectly willing to accept whatever lies he spewed on other things, the fact that he didn’t even get in the same time zone as the question with his answer caused her to come back with, “Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy?”
Ouch.
“No,” Walz responded this time. “All I said on this was, is, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just, that's what I've said. (That’s not anywhere close to what he’s said in the past or anywhere near what he had just garbled in response to the first question.) So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest, (No, he was not – that’s the whole freaking point of the issue, they had been crushed before he got there. Which means, by the way, that he decided to do there AFTER the Chinese regime slaughtered their own people for the sin of wanting to be free. He wasn’t bothered enough by that to cancel his vacation there. Let that sink in.) went in, and from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”
That last bit is even more odd than all the rest, and terrifying. He learned from the wholesale murder of Chinese protesters “a lot of what needed to be in governance”?
Is Tim Walz stupid or sick? Neither answer is good, and that he would give a response to anything that would lead to that question being asked is a testament to just how important it is to deny him access to the levers of power. That Kamala Harris would pick him, out of the entirety of the Democratic Party, to be her running mate is a warning shot across the bow about just how dangerous the idea of her being president truly is.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.