Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz drew fire during the October 1 VP debate for claims he made about being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Walz made the claim several times over the years, including in front of Congress. However, there’s evidence that he didn’t actually arrive in Hong Kong until a month after the incident took place. When pressed during the debate he claims he “misspoke,” but asserted that he “was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest.”
Tim Walz’s Tiananmen Square claims are the latest instance in which he’s “misspoken” about his past
Walz claims to have been in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, when the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred. At the time, Walz, then 25, was a teacher who was slated to teach at a middle school in Foshan, China.
While Walz claims to have misspoken, he has recounted the story of being in Hong Kong preparing for his journey to Foshan when the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred several times.
According to CNN, during a 2009 hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission of China, he said:
“Twenty years ago today, I was in Hong Kong preparing to go to Foshan to teach at Foshan No. 1 Middle School. 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.”
During a 2014 hearing in front of the same commission, he stated:
“As a young man, I was just going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong, and was in Hong Kong in May of ’89. And as the events were unfolding, several of us went in. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.
The opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important. And it was a very interesting summer to say the least. Because if you recall, as we moved in that summer and further on and the news blackouts and things that went on, you certainly can’t black out news from people if they want to get it,”
In a June 2019 radio interview on The Chad Hartman Show, he once again made the claim:
“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.”
While Walz did teach in China, he didn’t arrive there until August 1989. An issue of the Alliance Times-Herald newspaper, dated May 16, 1989, features a photo of Walz in a Nebraska National Guard storeroom. Another article published in April 1989 stated that Walz would be traveling to China in early August 1989. Additionally, when CNN asked the Harris campaign if Walz was in Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests or the Tiananmen Square Massacre, no one could provide evidence to substantiate his claim.
Walz has also allegedly overstated how many times he’s visited China. He stated in a 2016 interview that he’s traveled to the country “about 30 times” and said he’d been there “dozens and dozens and dozens of times” in a meeting with the Congressional-Executive Commission on China the same year. However, the Harris campaign told CNN the amount of times the vice presidential candidate had been to China is “likely closer to 15.”
In his defense, Walz stated during the debate, “My community knows who I am. They saw where I was at. Look, I will be the first to tell you, I have poured my heart into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times, but it’s always been about that. Those same people elected me to Congress for 12 years.”
When pressed by the moderators, he went on to say, “All I said on this was, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just – that’s what I’ve said. I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in, in governance.”
This isn’t the first time Walz has “misspoken” about his past. He’s also caught flak about a statement concerning “weapons of war that I carried in war” despite never being deployed to a combat zone. He also made statements suggesting he retired from the Army National Guard at a higher rank than he actually did.
