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Tim Walz Did Himself No Favors With That '60 Minutes' Interview

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  October 08, 2024 6:15 PM

On Monday night, the "60 Minutes" interview for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) aired. It was not a good look for Harris especially, but Walz also did the campaign no favors. 

Last Tuesday, Walz debated Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) for the vice presidential debate with CBS News. He was confronted about being a pathological liar, specifically to do with him not actually in in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre, though there are plenty more examples. In a particularly cringeworthy response, Walz offered that he was "a knucklehead," which he was also confronted about while on "Fox News Sunday."

To his credit, "60 Minutes" host Bill Whitaker pressed Walz on his response about being "a knucklehead." As he went on to ask the governor, "is that kind of misrepresentation, isn't that more than just being 'a knucklehead?'"

The answer that Walz offered was rather lacking. "I think folks know who I am. And I think they know the difference between someone expressing emotion, telling a story, getting a date wrong by--you--rather than a pathological liar like Donald Trump," he claimed, looking to deflect. 

Such a non-answer is insulting to the American people, almost certainly to veterans, especially since there's also been concerns about stolen valor. Whitaker did not ask about Trump, though, and if anyone is "a pathological liar," that would be Walz.

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"But I think it comes down to the question of whether--whether you can be trusted to tell the truth," Whitaker further pressed. 

"Yeah. Well--I can--I think I can. I will own up to being a knucklehead at times, but the folks closest to me know that I keep my word," Walz offered, which also suggests he's still looking to chalk it up to him just being "a knucklehead."

This wasn't the only problematic narrative about Walz that came up during the interview. For all of these misnomers about "Minnesota nice" and Walz being a "folksy" Midwesterner, he's had it out for his Republican counterpart by referring to Vance as "weird." 

It ended up taking off among Walz's fellow Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media. Vance, to his credit, has handled the insults in stride, and has said he sees it as the price to pay for being Trump's running mate.

Not only was Walz responsible for labeling Vance and Republicans as "weird," it may have even been the reason he was picked for the job. 

Up until Harris picked Walz, it seemed almost certain that Harris would pick Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) instead. Shapiro even toned down his pro-Israel views in the days leading up to Harris' announcement. While reports mentioned issues Shapiro had with his interview, as well as not wanting to be number two or leave his job as governor after having just recently been elected in 2022, there was also inescapable chatter about how Shapiro is Jewish, and how Harris had to cater to the radical leftist base of hers.

As Whitaker's narration also mentioned, per the CBS News transcript for this episode:

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz was little-known outside Minnesota just two months ago. He didn't exactly come from nowhere. He was a six-term congressman and now is governor of Minnesota, where he has championed abortion rights, gun control, and other progressive ideas. But it was calling former President Trump and Sen. JD Vance "weird" that may have landed him on the ticket.

...

It was that kind of humor and candor that helped land Tim Walz the job as Kamala Harris's running mate.

When asked about Harris selecting Walz, there weren't really any serious details discussed, and Shapiro wasn't mentioned. They "barely knew each other," Whitaker mentioned about Harris and Walz, though Harris still selected who she did. Walz did laugh about Harris asking him to watch how he says things, though, "whatever it might be."

As Whitaker also pointed out during the interview, referring to Republicans as "weird" has "sort of become a rallying cry for Democrats," and so he wanted to know Walz's thoughts on "why do you think that label stuck?"

"I was really talking about the behaviors. Being obsessed with people's personal lives in their bedrooms and their reproductive rights, making up stories about legal--folks legally here eating cats and dogs, they're dehumanizing," Walz tried to claim, though he was using such a label long before there were concerns about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. 

Even still, Walz continued to claim that "they go beyond weird because I said this: it becomes almost dangerous. Let's debate policy in a real way and let's try and find an objective truth again." Again, it's something else, though, for such a habitual liar as Walz to try to talk about wanting to "find an objective truth again."

Even CBS News made it a point to emphasize how "progressive" Walz is when describing his policies, which do include prioritizing abortion. "Walz proudly touts his record as governor of Minnesota, but it also has opened him up to criticism from his Republican opponents," Whitaker also shared. 

When asked to defend such a liberal record, though, Walz couldn't do so. 

"Former President Trump says that you and your administration here in Minnesota has been dangerously liberal. Radical left, he calls it," Whitaker pointed out, though it's certainly not just Trump who thinks so. "So, what do you say to that criticism, that rather than leading the way, you and Minnesota are actually out of step with the rest of the country," he went on to ask. 

Walz's non-answer involved pointing to certain parts of his governorship, which is not at all what his critics, or Whitaker was getting at with his question. 

"President Trump may be referring to that--that our children get breakfast and lunch in school so that they can learn. He may be talkin' about we have a paid family medical leave policy that was promoted by the business community," Walz offered.

"Donald Trump spends his time tearing down states rather than lifting up the things we do, the best of it. Donald Trump's critiques of that, not only are they wrong, but I'm waiting for, what—what is his solution? Here in Minnesota, we're so optimistic, we walk on water half the year," he continued, with laughter.

Criticisms of Walz and his radical record have involved not just abortion, but Minnesota being known as a "sanctuary state" for minors who may think they are transgender and wish to go through procedures that involve genital mutilation and sterilization to try to change their gender. He's also put tampons in boys bathrooms at school, and had a tipline for neighbors to snitch on each other during COVID. 

Further, Walz caved to the Black Lives Matters protesters in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, and then insulted the National Guard in addition to waiting for far too long to call them in to quell the unrest.

When it comes to the policies that Walz did bring up, he ended up lying about the support they received, as Nick Arama at our sister site of RedState highlighted when covering this "train wreck" of a "60 Minutes" interview. 

For all the good that he did, Whitaker did not challenge Walz on the support that the paid medical leave programs supposedly received, as the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce pointed out.

Walz is pathological indeed. The election is four weeks away, and the Harris-Walz ticket is running out of time to save themselves.