Tipsheet

Did Tim Walz Just Get Caught in Yet Another Weird Lie?

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  October 01, 2024 10:15 AM

Despite the Harris/Walz media avoidance strategy, we do know a number of things about the peculiar Tim Walz, Democrats' Vice Presidential nominee.  First, he's a radical ideologue who has rammed through an extreme left-wing agenda as governor, despite razor-thin Democratic legislative majorities.  Second, he lies habitually and serially about virtually everything.  He's lied and misled, knowingly and repeatedly, about his military service.  He's flagrantly lied about his extremely dangerous and reckless DUI.  He's lied about non-military elements of his military, embellishing and inventing 'achievements' that he hasn't actually earned.  He's even lied about how his own children were conceived, in order to bolster a false IVF attack against Republicans.  Third, we know that he has a strange fascination with China, including choosing to honeymoon there (in addition to his spouting various China-related falsehoods).  

On that last front, Walz has apparently been telling people that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.  As it happens, so was I.  My family was living there at the time.  My dad recalls watching the Tiananmen Square coverage on TV in our living room when the CCP cut the feed and the screen went blank.  My brother was born in Hong Kong, then under British control, just weeks after the terrible crackdown.  But let's scratch my "so was I" formulation from a few sentences ago, as it implies that Walz was, in fact, there.  It appears as though this is the latest whopper that's been uncovered:


"The campaign was unable to produce documentation to back up Walz’s statement that he was there during the uprising."  There is, however, documentation that Walz was in Nebraska during the time frame in question, as well as documentation suggesting that Walz 'would soon go' to China months after the uprising had been crushed.  It doesn't look like his campaign is even trying to back up Walz's claims on this one.  More from the Washington Free Beacon: 

At a 2014 congressional hearing held to mark the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tim Walz, then a congressman representing Minnesota’s first district, recalled being in Hong Kong when the Chinese Communist Party crushed the student protests that had roiled the country since mid-April of 1989. The unforgettable crackdown came on June 4 of that year...That anecdote has since been repeated, without scrutiny, by the New York Times, CBS News, and National Public Radio, among others. In reality, local news reports show that Walz was at home in Nebraska in May and June of 1989, as protests convulsed China and the government’s response turned the world’s attention to its gross human rights violations. He wouldn’t depart for China until August...Contemporaneous news reports show Walz touring a National Guard storeroom in Alliance, Nebraska, in May 1989. They indicate that Walz did not leave the United States until August of that year, at least two months after the student protests ended with the Tiananmen Square massacre...On Monday, Minnesota Public Radio also reported that Walz "was so proud of his extensive experience" traveling to China that he "occasionally used to exaggerate it"—claiming to have traveled there 30 times when his campaign now admits he has visited the country around 15 times... The date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown holds a special significance to Walz, according to his wife Gwen. The couple got married on the fifth anniversary of the massacre, with Walz telling his wife that he "wanted to have a date he'll always remember."

That last quote is especially bizarre, particularly in light of their choice to spend their honeymoon in Communist China.  As for the ongoing issue of truthfulness, is there anything this man won't fabricate, exaggerate, or lie about?  And might he finally be directly confronted about the stolen valor accusations against him at the debate, including the vast evidence that he's been dishonest on this front?  As Scott Jennings recalled on CNN, the one singular time Walz has been asked about this scandal (which is remarkable unto itself), he pretended that he just gets emotional and is bad at grammar:


"Grammar" and getting emotional have nothing to do with falsely stating that he carried a gun into war (he didn't), endlessly claiming an unearned military rank (even after people up and down his chain of command called him out on it), or allowing books, articles and introductions to wrongly assert that he's an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran without correcting the record.  I'll leave you with a glimpse of the consequences of one of Walz's worst policies as governor, about which he has -- you guessed it -- lied shamelessly:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said during a television interview on Sunday that “over 80% of our students missed less than 10 days of in-class learning” during the pandemic.  The Republican Party of Minnesota tweeted a clip of the statement and accused the governor of downplaying the impact of the school closings on students. Claire Lancaster, a spokesperson for the governor said, “The Governor’s comments were taken out of context. He was referring to the 2021-22 school year, when the state placed no restrictions on in-class learning and made every effort to prevent COVID from disrupting the school year.” However, in watching the entire nearly eight-minute interview on WCCO-TV broadcast live at the Minnesota State Fair on Sunday morning, at no time was the 2021-22 school year specified. In fact, the interviewer clearly seemed to be talking specifically about the initial round of school closings beginning in March of 2020.

Pathological.

Recommended

Merry Christmas, And Democrats Can Go To Hell Derek Hunter
Biden Was Too 'Mentally Fatigued' to Take Call From Top Committee Chair Before Afghanistan Withdrawal Sarah Arnold