Democrat vice presidential nominee Tim Walz suggested in an interview with CBS News’s 60 Minutes that aired on Tuesday that his “misspeaking” does not matter because Minnesotans know and support him.
“I think folks know who I am. And I think they know the difference between someone expressing emotion, telling a story, getting a date wrong by — you — rather than a pathological liar like Donald Trump,” he responded when asked about his lie that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square Massacre when he was actually in Nebraska.
When pressed on whether he could be trusted to tell the truth, he added, “Well — I can — I think I can. I will own up to being a knucklehead at times, but the folks closest to me know that I keep my word.”
Walz said something similar at the debate with Republican presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), when asked about the Tiananmen Square lie.
He said, “Look, my community knows who I am. They saw where I was at. They, look, I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect. And I’m a knucklehead at times, but it’s always been about that. Those same people elected me to Congress for twelve years.”
Despite his reliance on support from Minnesotans, a 2022 AP VoteCast poll showed that only about 50 percent of Minnesotans had a favorable view of him, while 40 percent had a negative one.
And the New York Times in August interviewed Minnesotans who expressed doubt about Walz. One of them, Dan Radant, 49, the owner of a trucking company, displays a sign in his yard in Inver Grove Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, that features Walz wearing a dunce hat and says: “MY GOVERNOR IS AN IDIOT.”
The article said:
[Radant] sees a region in decline, and he said that Mr. Walz and other liberals deserve much of the blame — for high taxes, uncontrolled immigration, the “woke” ideology festering in schools, and the laws keeping abortion legal in the state.
“I think it’s good that Harris picked him, because it’ll show the country how radical he is,” Mr. Radant said. “It’s going to help Trump for sure.”
Eric Anderson, a former mayor of Mankato, told The Times, “Tim Walz is far more liberal than people have assumed. … I really don’t like how polarized we are as people. And I don’t think Governor Walz has helped that in Minnesota at all.”
Among the lies Walz has told are that he carried a weapon “in war” when he never deployed to a combat zone, that he was a retired command sergeant major and the highest enlisted ranking veteran in Congress, that his children were conceived through in vitro fertilization, and that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square Massacre when he was really in Nebraska.
Walz has never admitted to lying, with his campaign claiming he “misspoke” about being “in war,” and him saying he speaks passionately, uses bad grammar, and can be a “knucklehead.”
Walz suggested during the debate with Republican presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R) that his misspeaking did not matter because Minnesotans knew where he stood.
However, among Minnesotans who do not support Walz is a group of veterans who served with him in the National Guard and have long tried to bring attention to his lies about his military career.
One of them, retired Army Command Sergeant Major Tom Behrends, has displayed a “Walz is a traitor” banner on a water tower on his farm in Minnesota.
He and a group of veterans who served with Walz spoke to Fox News earlier this year about their fervent opposition to Walz.
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