As recently as February, Mr. Walz said on a podcast that he had been in Hong Kong, then a British colony, “on June 4 when Tiananmen happened,” and decided to cross into mainland China to take up his teaching duties even though many people were urging him not to.
But it was not true. Mr. Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, indeed taught at a high school in China as part of a program sending American teachers abroad, but he did not actually travel to the country until August 1989.
Why bother making something like this up?
JD Vance said he didn’t attend the 2024 Erotic Couch and Pathological Liar Symposium. Not true.
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Okay so neither the CNN article or this article says that they’ve independently confirmed the reports/when the pictures in the articles were taken which i think is important but most importantly, this was 1989. He was 2-3 months off. This is likely just him misremembering from 35 years ago. He should have said he was there “around” tiananmen square but does that really matter much? CNN heard from a source close to Walz that said “the point Gov. Walz is making when he discusses this is that some folks in the World Teach program discussed dropping out after Tiananmen Square, but he continued on with the program because he believed it was important for the Chinese people to learn about American democracy and American history.” which makes sense.
CNN also said he has exaggerated the amount of trips he took to China saying 30 times once and dozens and dozens another time. They reached out to the Harris campaign who said it was likely closer to 15. When you go to a country that many fucking times it’s not surprising to lose count. It’s not like you’re counting it. It’s not hard to lose track. My mom has been to Greece tons of time to visit family but could she say how many times she’s been there? Nope. She’d generalize because that’s how that goes.
But of course we have to be pedantic and “fact check” this because it’s important to be fair and who cares if we ignore some of the shitty things trump said during his rallies or how he’s obviously mentally deteriorating, obviously Walz misremembering is so much more important. And obviously this shows it’s a big scandal because earlier this year the news said that he said he carried weapons in war and he never served in combat even though he said he carried weapons of war during the war while he was stationed in the European theater. Which is accurate, but did the media care that’s what he said? Nope. Walz isn’t a consistent liar like Trump and Vance but sure let’s equivocate them and Walz.
I’ve now been to Berlin at least 5 times in 28 years. I say at least because I now have to start rebuilding what happened when to have a truly accurate accounting. Once it gets above 10 I’m going to have to keep a note card reminder to have the number around.
Someone with Governor Walz’s travel history would be just a blur unless you get official records or work really hard to remember exact trip counts.
Ask Felon Trump how many times he’s been to Russia and see what guess he makes. This is a nothingburger of a story.
Trying to remember what I was doing between April and August 1989… I think that would have been the end of my first year as a Freshman in college? Not sure, super blurry.
He was off by two months 35 years ago?!! HOW DARE HE!!!
Contemporaneous news reports in Nebraska indicated that Mr. Walz was still in his home state during the spring and did not leave for China until August.
That doesn’t sound like certainty to me. So how strong are those indications?
Maybe Walz remembers it wrong, the incident would still be very recent, and the warning sincere about not going to mainland.
But it could also be he remembers correctly, and the “indications” are wrong.No matter which, it doesn’t really matter if it was 2 months later or not. It was definitely at around that time.
That doesn’t sound like certainty to me. So how strong are those indications? Maybe Walz remembers it wrong, the incident would still be very recent, and the warning sincere about not going to mainland. But it could also be he remembers correctly, and the “indications” are wrong.
So the civil unrest that was caused by the massacre continued for a very long time. the CCP still censors and bans refrences to the event today, and if you talk about it, you go to jail. It’s very likely there was unrest on the mainland when he was there, and even after, there would still be warnings about unrest from hong kong residence (Probably in exactly the same way My grandmother still warns me about going into ‘that wasteland, Minneapolis’. Even though I’ve sent her the photos of a vibrant city center that’s absolutely not a waste land.)
Contemporaneous news reports in Nebraska indicated that Mr. Walz was still in his home state during the spring and did not leave for China until August.
Any link to these contemporaneous news reports?
The Washington Free Beacon makes no attempt to present itself as non-partisan but does provide photos. I can’t verify that those photos are authentic but I assume that the NYT, CNN, etc. have verified them before publishing this story.
Edit: I also found this additional newspaper clipping, which appears to be the source for the following claim:
And a story published in another Nebraska paper on August 11 that year said he would “leave Sunday en route to China” after having “about given up participating [in WorldTeach] earlier this summer during the student revolts in parts of China.”
Who gives a shit.
New York Times - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for New York Times:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/01/us/politics/tim-walz-hong-kong-tiananmen.html
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I’m not a fan of the “whataboutism” that’s bound to pop up in these replies. I like Walz quite a bit, but he got caught in a lie and it’s good to call both sides on things like this. It reminds them that we’re paying attention.
Absolutely, but it’s important to measure lies by their impact - this is a rather irrelevant lie while “Hatians are eating your pets” caused an outbreak of xenophobia and domestic terrorism.
Both are bad - one is clearly worse.
I wouldn’t call what Walz did necessarily a lie.
A lie requires an intent to deceive. August vs that spring is close enough in a general sense, and he wasn’t saying he was physically at tianamen square. Especially when you consider that the massacre kicked off a lot of riots and unrest which likely continued while he was there.
Trying to spark off a race war on multiple occasions with multiple, intentional, falsehoods vs over-generalizations are not the same thing.
