Exclusive — Peter Schweizer: Tim Walz Wanted Students to ‘Downplay’ Their ‘Americanness’ When They Went to China

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) reportedly told exchange students going over the China to downplay their “Americanness,” New York Times bestselling author and Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.

Schweizer spoke to host Mike Slater about Walz’s affection toward China, mentioning the exchange program he set up, funded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“You can like China. You can like the Chinese people. The question is, when you set up an exchange program, as he did, to bring students to China, you’re not dealing with the Chinese people, you’re dealing with the Chinese Communist Party,” Schweizer began, explaining that Walz’s program was funded by the CCP and organized with the help of the CCP.

“And when you start to look at some of the, you know, activities involving the students, it gets slightly odd. I mean, you know, some of the local press accounts from the Midwest report that students were told by Walz, ‘When you go to China, downplay your Americanness,’ which is, is kind of odd, because if you’re having a cultural exchange, the purpose is to actually learn about the other culture,” Schweizer noted.

“You want the Chinese to learn about American culture, and certainly you wouldn’t want to tell Chinese coming to the United States to downplay their Chineseness. So there’s that element of it,” Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, said, explaining that Walz also took some students as part of the exchange program during his anniversary — which is deliberately on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

“And it’s designed to immerse Americans in Chinese culture, which is great. That’s wonderful, but again, you’re doing it through a CCP organization. These are known to be organizations that are designed to advance the interests of the Chinese state. And when you read some of the experiences of some of students who said they were told by Walz to downplay their Americanness when they went to China, that, to me, reeks of the sorts of things that the CCP would want him to tell the students to do,” Schweizer observed.

LISTEN:

“Because, you know, they’re all in favor of Americans learning about Chinese culture, particularly at this time in the early 1990s — you’re talking about a couple of years after Tiananmen Square. They certainly did not want Chinese students learning about Americanness, as Walz said it,” the Blood Money author said, noting that Walz visited China 30 times.

“Which, again, that’s fine, but it has all the hallmarks of the CCP looking for opportunities through these front groups to find people that they can make sympathetic to their cause,” Schweizer said.

“It doesn’t mean they’re card-carrying members of the party. It doesn’t mean that they parrot everything they say. What they call it is big help with a little bad mouth. In other words, you’re going to say a few things about human rights, but ultimately, you want warmer, closer relationships with us, and we’re glad you’re advocating for us, because that’s beneficial,” he added.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.