WASHINGTON – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he “misspoke” on longstanding claims that he was in Hong Kong in the spring of 1989 when the Tiananmen Square massacre left hundreds dead.
Recently discovered news reports from Nebraska showed the Democratic vice presidential nominee was actually in the United States during that time and left for China that summer, after the massacre.
Asked to explain that discrepancy during the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate Tuesday night, Walz struggled to succinctly answer.
“I have tried to do the best I can,” he said. “I have not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times.”
He said he learned a lot from his time in China, and that it was evidenced in his career in public service.
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“Many times I will talk a lot, I will get caught up in the rhetoric,” he said. “Being there, the impact it made, the difference it made in my life, I learned a lot about China.”
“I got there that summer and misspoke,” he concluded.
Walz cited the anecdote during a 2014 Congressional hearing, saying he was in Hong Kong in May 1989. “And as the events were unfolding, several of us went in. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong,” he said at the time. He repeated the claim on a podcast as recently as February.
But local news reports resurfaced by conservative news outlet the Washington Free Beacon indicate he was still in Nebraska at that time.
The Alliance (Neb.) Times-Herald featured a photo of Walz touring a Nebraska National Guard storeroom on May 16, 1989. The photo’s caption says Walz “will take over the job” of staffing the storeroom from a retiring guardsman and “will be moving to Alliance,” Nebraska, CNN reported.
Another newspaper article published by a Nebraska-based outlet in April 1989 reported that Walz planned on traveling to China in early August, a month after the protests ended. Minnesota Public Radio News and APM Reports first reported the possible contradiction.
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Walz may have also been misleading about how often he has traveled to China. During a 2016 interview, the governor said he has visited the country “about 30 times.” Additionally, he told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in 2016 that he went to Hong Kong “dozens and dozens and dozens of times.”
Republicans have been critical of Walz’s connection to China. House Oversight Chairman James Comer subpoenaed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday for documents related to the governor possibly having ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“Throughout his career, Governor Walz has stood up to the (Chinese Communist Party), fought for human rights and democracy, and always put American jobs and manufacturing first,” the Harris campaign said in a statement to Minnesota Public Radio.
“Republicans are twisting basic facts and desperately lying to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda: praising dictators, and sending American jobs to China.”
Jonathan Limehouse contributed.
