Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz on Tuesday night said he had made a “miscommunication” in the past when he claimed to have been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square crackdown, when Chinese troops attacked and killed pro-democracy protesters. I admitted it.
The Minnesota governor said he was in Hong Kong during the summer of the Tiananmen Square massacre, but not in June 1989, when a crackdown took place in and around the square in the Chinese capital.
The admission came after reports contradicted Walz’s previous claims that he was in Hong Kong during the deadly protests.
In a debate with Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance, Walz said the false statements were born out of rhetorical frenzy rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead the American people. .
“I wasn’t perfect,” Walz said. “Sometimes my knuckles get dull.”
“I’m going to talk a lot and a lot,” he added. “You get caught up in the rhetoric.”
One of Vice President Kamala Harris’ central arguments in her presidential campaign is that former President Donald Trump cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Walz’s false claim that he was in Hong Kong during a landmark event in world history creates a vulnerability that Republicans are sure to exploit.
During the discussion, Walz tried to refocus questions about his role as a young teacher who took his students to China to learn about another culture.
After graduating from university in 1989, Waltz first traveled to China, first stopping in Hong Kong, then a British colony. He spent a year teaching English and American history and culture at a high school in the southern Chinese city of Foshan through Harvard University’s WorldTeach program.
On a February episode of the podcast Pod Save America, Walz said he was in Hong Kong on “June 4, when Tiananmen Square happened.” He said he was even more motivated to go to mainland China after the violent incident, which is estimated to have left thousands of people dead and seriously strained Beijing’s international relations.
The timing of his arrival in Hong Kong was first questioned Monday by Minnesota Public Radio, which cited an August 1989 article in a Nebraska newspaper that said Walz was leaving for China that same month.
Asked about the discrepancy on Tuesday, the Harris-Waltz campaign did not dispute that Walz misspoken, but did not explain why. The campaign says Walz is likely to have visited China more than 15 times, rather than the 30 he has previously claimed.
A source familiar with Mr. Walz’s comments said the point he was trying to make was that some people in his education program were discussing dropping out after the Tiananmen massacre, “but he said it was “I continued the program because I believed it was important to people.” I want people to learn about American democracy and American history. ”
“This is about trying to understand the world,” Walz said during Tuesday’s debate.
Walz has long been a vocal critic of China’s human rights record, trade practices and growing aggression in the South China Sea. But he also spoke about potential areas for cooperation between the United States and China, which is said to be the most important bilateral relationship in the world.
“I don’t fall into the category of saying China necessarily needs to be an adversary,” he said in a 2016 video interview.
Republicans, who prefer to take a hard line against China and its ruling Communist Party, are using Walz’s experience in China, which is not mentioned in Harris’ biography on her campaign website, as reason to suspect her. are.
On Monday, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, called Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for information about Walz’s “associations with the Chinese Communist Party.” Summoned.
Just before Tuesday’s debate, the Trump campaign sent an email accusing Walz of being “pro-China,” citing his reported 30 visits.
Republicans have attacked Walz over other inaccurate statements, even as President Trump regularly spreads misinformation. Walz, who spent 24 years in the military but had never been deployed to a combat zone, said in August that he “misspoke” when he talked about using weapons “in war” in a 2018 video distributed by the Harris campaign. said.
Mr. Vance also accused Mr. Walz of lying when he implied that he and his wife Gwen had their child through in vitro fertilization. They used another form of assisted reproductive technology called intrauterine insemination.
A spokesperson for the Harris-Waltz campaign said that in her earlier comments, Walz “used commonly understood abbreviations for infertility treatment.”
