Tim Walz clears air on Tiananmen Square ‘visit’: I’m a knucklehead, misspoke

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz found himself in a tough spot during a debate with Donald Trump’s running mate and Republican Senator JD Vance after questions arose about the timeline of a trip he took to China in 1989.
The controversy, which surfaced just ahead of the highly anticipated vice presidential debate, centers on whether Walz made misleading claims about his presence in Hong Kong during the tumultuous period of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Republicans seized on the discrepancy, with Walz’s opponents accusing him of misrepresenting his experience for political gain.
During the debate, the moderator questioned Walz about reports that suggested he had falsely claimed to be in Hong Kong during the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations that ended in a brutal crackdown by the Chinese government.
In response, Walz admitted he “misspoke” about the timeline and pivoted to highlight his dedication to public service, both as an educator and a soldier.
“I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said self-deprecatingly. “Many times I’ll talk a lot, get caught up in the rhetoric.”
A former football coach, Walz said, “As a young teacher my first year out, I got the opportunity in the summer of 1989 to travel to China, thirty-five years ago. I came back home and then started a programme to take young people there. We would take basketball teams, we would take baseball teams, we would take dancers, and we would go back and forth to China. The issue for that was to try and learn.”
Hitting back at his opponents, he said, “I would make the case that Donald Trump should’ve come on one of those trips with us. I guarantee he wouldn’t be praising Xi [Jinping] about Covid.”
The Minnesota Governor also defended his motivations for travelling to China, emphasising the importance of cross-cultural understanding.
The controversy surrounding Walz’s trip is rooted in comments he made during a 2014 congressional hearing commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. At the time, Walz testified that he had been in Hong Kong during the pro-dmeocracy protests in May 1989. Later, in a 2019 interview, he claimed to have been in the city on the day hundreds of protesters were killed by the Chinese government in Tiananmen Square.
However, records suggest that Walz did not leave for Hong Kong and China until August 1989, several months after the massacre, and was likely in Nebraska at the time of the incident.
Minnesota Public Radio reported that a photograph from May 16, 1989, showed Walz working in the National Guard Armory in Nebraska, with records confirming his departure for China in August of that year.