Walz’s false claims on Tiananmen Square protests: What to know

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), the vice presidential running mate to Vice President Harris, wasn’t in Hong Kong when protests erupted in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, despite his previous claims.

That’s been established and, without fully explaining why he lied and said he arrived overseas months earlier than he really did in 1989, he said during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate that he’s “a knucklehead at times.”

“I will get caught up in the rhetoric. But being there, the impact it made, the difference it made in my life. I learned a lot about China,” he said.

On Wednesday, he attempted again to provide context to the falsehood.

“I got my dates wrong. I was in Hong Kong in 1989 … It was profound for me,” he told reporters during a campaign stop, adding he felt his experience helped grow his appreciation for democracy.

The Tiananmen Square story is among other false or embellished claims that Walz, 60, has made through the years that have come back to confront him since he leapt onto the national stage and joined the Democratic presidential ticket in August.

Like others, it’s appeared hard to explain away, beyond being an exaggeration of his actual experiences.

The Hong Kong claim isn’t one he frequently repeats, nor is it one he’s appeared to levy for power. It was not part of his early biographies, even those that mentioned his travels to China and the year he spent teaching abroad.

In a recent Minnesota Public Radio story on Walz’s broader China experience after he was plucked from near-obscurity in the Midwest to be Harris’s running mate, the outlet noted that a 2014 quote from Walz in a Congressional hearing marking the massacre’s 25th anniversary didn’t match up with an August 1989 story in a local newspaper that said Walz was about to leave for China — putting his arrival months after the June 4, 1989, massacre.

Walz had told the panel he was in Hong Kong “as the events were unfolding” because of his year abroad teaching in China.

“As a young man I was just going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong province and was in Hong Kong in May 1989. As the events were unfolding, several of us went in. I still remember the train station in Hong Kong,” he said. “There was a large number of people — especially Europeans, I think — very angry that we would still go after what had happened.”

Five years earlier, during a similar hearing to mark the 20th anniversary, Walz told a slightly different version of the story with a still incorrect timeline, a transcript first reported by The Associated Press shows.

“Twenty years ago today I was in Hong Kong preparing to go to [Foshan] to teach at [Foshan] Number One Middle School. And I can tell you that for people of my generation, here, too, what you were doing in the democracy, that you were asking for and what the goddess of democracy symbolized was as strong for us as it was for you. It reinforced all that we care about, all of those things that we hold most dear.”

“To watch what happened at the end of the day on June 4 was something that many of us will never forget, we pledge to never forget, and bearing witness and accurate telling of history is absolutely crucial for any nation to move forward,” he added.

He told another version of the story still placing himself in Asia during the massacre during a 2019 radio interview unearthed by CNN.

“I was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, when, of course, Tiananmen Square happened. And I was in China after that. It was very strange ’cause, of course, all outside transmissions were, were blocked — Voice of America — and, of course, there was no, no phones or email or anything. So I was kind of out of touch. It took me a month to know the Berlin Wall had fallen when I was living there,” he said.

During the debate, Walz tried to explain away his Hong Kong exaggerations by sharing his background as a young teacher in small town Nebraska, who had returned from China to share his appreciation for democracy and for the people fighting for it in the communist country.

“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,” he said. “I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest, went on, and from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”

“My community knows who I am. They saw where I was at,” he said.

Minnesota Public Radio’s article noted that Walz became somewhat of a local small-town celebrity and gave many presentations to civic clubs, including Rotary, when he returned from his year teaching in China.

The State Department had warned Americans a few months before he left to stay away because of the “extremely volatile and potentially life-threatening” situation unfolding with the protests.

In the article Minnesota Public Radio unearthed, Walz told the local newspaper before he left that he felt “somewhat apprehensive, but also excited.”

“It will be an interesting experience, I’m sure,” he said.