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?
It was 35 years ago, not hard to believe that he just slightly misremembers it. People could still have been warning him not to go in August.
Came here to say exactly this. He just misremembered the exact date after several decades. Likely he couldn’t have traveled much sooner anyways. August was still dangerous, so he was being honest about the risk taking and such.
JD Vance said he didn’t attend the 2024 Erotic Couch and Pathological Liar Symposium. Not true.
Who gives a shit?
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.
Right? At worst, Walz took the same risk (it was still a risky time in August) and came soon after. So being off by a few months after several decades has past isn’t a big deal at all.
He didn’t even lie, he just misremembered a minor detail. But he got the season right.
Couchfucker makes up lies about immigrants exposing them to violence and this is what you think needs fact-checking?
Sweet sweet New York times going for the hard shitting stories.
Hey, don’t give them too much credit here. They assigned two writers to write a story about something Minnesota Public Radio covered. Except MPR just talked about the exaggeration for a couple sentences, because it wasn’t a particularly important fact in a larger segment about Walz and China. You need big journalism to figure out a way to expand second-hand reporting to a full length article.
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.
That’s the year the best version of Batman (that’s right, Michael Keaton is the best Batman. Come at me bro) came out.
Other than that: complete blur.
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.
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.
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.)
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/01/us/politics/tim-walz-hong-kong-tiananmen.html
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This serves as a great reminder that Tim Walz is……wait for it……a politician!
Seems to me he convinced himself it happened this way and just kept telling the story. It’s a pretty relatable thing to do actually, but yeah, he was in China the same year, but not during Tiananmen.
This is not the same kind of lie that Trump and Vance tell, but it’s still not the truth. Fortunately many of his supporters can hold two truths in their head at the same time: Walz is a politician who sometimes lies a little, and Walz has more integrity in his pinky finger than Trump and Vance have combined.
This serves as a great reminder that Tim Walz is……
I think you mean human being. If it’s a mistake it’s not an attempt to deceit like is kind of implied by reminding us he is a politician.
Here comes the subtle propaganda accounts. “No really, I’m gonna vote for this liar”.
Bullshit. The whole point is to put Walz’s slight mistiming of a story that happened 40 years ago on the same level as “they’re eating the dogs!”
Is it a coincidence that these people are coming out on October 1st, about the same time Reddit got hit with a massive wave of bots?
I see where you’re coming from, because yeah he’s more of a human being than most politicians. But what makes him a politician is that he hasn’t corrected the record, and telling the story makes him look good, so he keeps telling the story.
But also, he is a politician. (A politician I will happily vote for.)
Whether he was in Hong Kong or Nebraska the exact day Tiananmen happened is irrelevant to the part that makes him look good (going to teach in China in the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen).
His “lie” wasn’t even that he was there during Tianamen, it was about where he was when he decided to go to China. Hong Kong was British at the time and no version of his story claims he was in mainland China during Tiananmen.
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.
It’s such an irrelevant fact check though. He didn’t lie about the actual thing that made the story (going into China shortly after Tiananmen), but they got him on where he was when he decided to go? It’s disappointing that his story isn’t pristinely accurate, but it’s not actually an important detail of it. It’s like fact-checking Kerry’s military service and focusing on which town he was living in when he signed up.
This just looks like NYT trying to find equivalent numbers of falsehoods so they can prove they’re not biased.
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