In 2014, then-Rep. Tim Walz regaled fellow members of Congress with a recollection of being in Hong Kong during the notorious Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 — but contemporary local media coverage indicates he was actually safe and sound in his native Nebraska as the tanks rolled through Beijing.
“I was just going to teach high school in Foshan [city], in Guangdong [province], and was in Hong Kong in May of ‘89,” Walz, now Minnesota’s Democratic governor and the party’s nominee for vice president, said at a May 20, 2014, congressional hearing marking 25 years since the Chinese Communist Party’s deadly crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests.
“And as the events were unfolding, several of us went in. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong … There was a large number of, especially European, I think, very angry that we would still go after what had happened, but it was my belief at that time that the diplomacy was going to happen on many levels,” added Walz (D-Minn.).
The massacre — the estimated death toll of which ranges from hundreds to as many as 10,000 — took place on June 4, 1989, and an article in the Chadron (Neb.) Record newspaper from April 11 of that year contradicts Walz’s claim to have been anywhere near the brutality.
The outlet reported Walz, then a Chadron State College senior, wasn’t leaving for China until August, more than two months after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Minnesota Public Radio was the first to point out the discrepancy in Walz’s account Monday, noting the campaign “was unable to produce documentation to back up Walz’s statement that he was there during the uprising.”
The outlet further cited another article in a local Nebraska paper from Aug. 11,1989, which stated Walz would “leave Sunday [Aug. 13, 1989]” for China, again refuting his assertion he was in proximity to the bloodshed.
The apparent fib is not the first time Walz has attempted to burnish his resume with exaggerations. MPR writes that the Harris-Walz campaign has flat-out acknowledged his prior claims of making 30 trips to China over the years was in reality “closer to 15.”
Walz playing fast and loose with the truth didn’t stop the New York Times from parroting his false claim in an article published last month, writing that the Democratic VP nominee was “just across the Chinese border” as People’s Liberation Army tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to crush the protests.
Walz, a former teacher, has chalked up his penchant for stretching the truth on everything from his military service record to his time spent in China to his “passion” and even his poor “grammar.”
The Harris-Walz campaign has had to repeatedly backpedal on his behalf, saying last month the two-term governor “misspoke” when comments he made about “weapons of war, that I carried in war” drew accusations of stolen valor.
The Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
