In what was something of an exceptionally awkward and mind-numbingly facile segment on ABC News, even for the network and its guest, Minnesota Governor and 2024 Kamala Harris running mate Tim Walz argued that the reason he has made false claims about his past is that he wears his “emotions on [his] sleeve” and is passionate.
That came when the governor appeared on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Friday, October 11 and spoke with host Michael Strahan about his past untrue comments about his time in China. As background, Walz has said that he was in Hong Kong for the Tiananmen Square massacre, which is untrue; he was in the country months later, a fact about which he was pressed during the vice presidential debate.
Strahan, pressing Walz on the matter, noted that Walz had lied about when he was in China and, as an explanation, said only that he is a “knucklehead,” which is not the answer that Americans are looking for, as the details were quite off and Americans much know if they can trust him to tell the truth.
Strahan said, asking about the issue, “You call yourself a knucklehead, but you made some statements that just aren’t true. And the comment about weapons of war that I carried in war, which you didn’t. You said you were in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre, when you weren’t. You kinda chalked it all up to bad grammar or getting the dates wrong.”
Responding, Walz first said that he did go to Hong Kong, then went on to say that he was in the National Guard, which is irrelevant. He said, “Look, 35 years ago, I got the opportunity to be in Hong Kong, to be in China.”
Continuing, he said, “I learned a lot about it, served 24 years in the National Guard. Passionately, in an instance, talking about gun violence in schools….Proud of the service I’ve done, proud to be a teacher in that classroom. Proud to have been very public all these years. And owning it when I said I was there in August of ’89.”
Still not done with the matter, Gov. Walz continued with his near-incoherent rambles and told Strahan, “I think what you see here, you saw it in Minnesota. Been elected eight times here. These things have been very public for folks here. They see the results of things that we’ve passed.”
Then, when Strahan brought the matter back to the issue of “trust,” and “some people saying ‘he can’t even tell the truth about himself,'” he asked Walz, “What do you say to them?” Walz again didn’t give an answer. Instead, he said that unimportant things get “spun” in a political environment, which didn’t address the matter of trust.
In Walz’s words: “Well, I — I said they know who I am. I know who I am. I know the work that I’ve done. I know things get — get spun in a political environment, but I think what they see is, if they want to compare that talking about immigration policy or seeing the things that Donald Trump would say, I think there’s a big difference than — than missing a date when you’re there and, again, spinning something for political reason. I’m very clear who I have been.”
Walz also said, blaming his “passion” for his weird statements, “Yeah. Well, I did it, you know, even the other day of just speaking passionately about these gun violence situations and meeting with these survivors. I sat in the room with the Sandy Hook folks. I — a friend of David Hogg, who’s been an activist on this. People know in — that — and then it gets spun in that ‘he didn’t say something true.’ It was very clear that I was talking about these veterans.”
Adding to that, Walz also blamed his emotions, saying, “Very clear that I wear — you know, my — I wear my emotions on my sleeve. And I do think in these positions, whether it be governor or being Vice President of the United States, you do need to be collect — careful. You do need to be a little more thoughtful on it. And I think that — what you see is someone who’s been in classrooms a lot. I have been around coaching a lot. I speak passionately and I — I think doing that, you need to combine the two and I think that’s what she’s — she’s referring to.”
Watch them here:
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