CNN
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The newly unearthed report contradicts previous claims about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s trip to China, including a visit to the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protest that ended with a few hundred people. The lawsuit also includes an allegation that the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate was in Hong Kong for a teaching job in 1989. Number of protesters killed by the Chinese government.
The disagreement over Walz’s relationship with China comes as a result of the Ohio senator’s Republican ally, J.D. Vance, announcing that Walz is the Republican vice presidential nominee ahead of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate in New York. He has suggested that he may use his background in China to attack rivals. When Walz was a teacher before entering politics, he regularly organized and accompanied trips to China.
Mr. Walz previously said he visited Hong Kong in “May 1989,” weeks before the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing. At a hearing of the Congressional Executive Committee on China commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 2014, Walz, then a Minnesota congressman, appeared to recall details of his travels to the area at the time.
“When I was young, I was just going to teach high school in Foshan City, Guangdong Province, and I was in Hong Kong in May of 1989,” he said. “And as events unfolded, a few of us went inside. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.”
“The opportunity to attend a high school in China during that critical time seemed like a really important one to me, and it was a very interesting summer to say the least, because that summer and after that we moved… “And if you remember that there was a news blackout and all that, because you certainly can’t make the news black if people want to know,” he continued.
Walz’s 2014 claim that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests has been repeated in media reports. However, a contemporary newspaper report, first resurfaced by the conservative Washington Free Beacon, said Walz was in Nebraska at the time. A May 16, 1989 issue of the Alliance Times-Herald includes a photo of Walz touring a Nebraska National Guard warehouse. In the photo’s caption, the newspaper said Walz would “take over” the job of staffing a warehouse from a retired security guard and “move to Alliance,” Nebraska. Another newspaper article about Walz’s travel plans to China, published by a Nebraska-based news organization in April 1989, reported that Walz was planning a trip to China in early August of that year.
When asked by CNN whether Walz was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests, the Harris campaign could not provide any evidence to support Walz’s claims.
The discrepancy was first reported by Minnesota Public Radio News and APM Reports.
Walz also appears to have exaggerated the number of trips he took to China. In a 2016 interview, he said he had visited China “about 30 times.” At another meeting of the Congressional Executive Committee on China in 2016, Walz claimed to have visited Hong Kong “dozens and dozens of times.”
When asked to explain how many times Walz has visited China, a Harris campaign spokesperson told CNN that Walz has been to China “probably closer to 15 times.”
China has long held an important place in Waltz’s life, ever since he first visited the country in 1989. Waltz and his wife, Gwen Waltz, married on June 4, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, and spent their honeymoon with a group of students. Educational trips to China were something Walz did regularly when he was a teacher before becoming a congressman. Ahead of her wedding, Gwen Waltz told the Nebraska-based Star-Herald newspaper that she planned to get married on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre because “I wanted a date to remember forever.”
Since joining the Harris campaign, Walz has not elaborated on China or his travel history there.
Republicans have brought Walz’s ties to China under increased scrutiny in recent days. Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign, said on Monday that he expected Mr. Vance to attack Mr. Walz because of his history of visiting China.
“Tiananmen Tim! Funny thing is, they’re changing this now – we were going to call him out on this in tomorrow night’s debate! Is there anything else you want to say, Tim? ?,” Miller said in a social media post in response to an explanation provided by the Harris campaign about Walz’s trip to China.
Congressional Republicans have also joined the Trump camp in questioning Walz’s ties to China. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Monday asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for documents related to Mr. Walz as part of a “whistleblower” allegation to the committee that Mr. Walz has ties to the Chinese Communist Party. was summoned. The subpoena is the latest step by House Republicans to focus on Walz’s ties to China through an investigation that began in August, shortly after Walz joined the Democratic Party.
The contradictions surrounding Walz’s travels to China and Hong Kong mark the latest example of the governor’s past statements proving inaccurate since he became the Democratic vice presidential nominee. . In August, a Harris campaign spokesperson said Walz had made a “gaffe” in a 2018 video in which she said she handled assault weapons “in war.”
Later that month, Gwen Waltz revealed that the couple had undergone infertility treatments other than IVF to conceive, after her husband suggested he had done so.
Correction: This article has been updated to accurately reflect Tim Walz’s previous claims that he traveled to Asia in 1989. He claimed to have been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests.
