During a 2014 congressional hearing commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tim Walz, then a congressman representing Minnesota’s first district, reflected on his time in Hong Kong when the Chinese Communist Party suppressed the student protests that had been sweeping the country since mid-April of 1989. The unforgettable crackdown occurred on June 4 of that year.
“I was just going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong, and was in Hong Kong in May of ‘89,” he said. “And as the events were unfolding, several of us went in. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.” He went on: “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.”
That anecdote has since been repeated without scrutiny by outlets such as the New York Times, CBS News, and National Public Radio, among others. In reality, local news reports indicate that Walz was at home in Nebraska during May and June of 1989, as protests rocked China and the government’s response drew global attention to its egregious human rights violations. He did not travel to China until August, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
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Local news reports reveal that Walz was touring a National Guard storeroom in Alliance, Nebraska, in May 1989. These reports indicate that he did not leave the United States until August of that year, which was at least two months after the student protests concluded with the Tiananmen Square massacre. The discrepancy was first reported by Minnesota Public Radio’s APM Reports on Monday. The Walz campaign “was unable to produce documentation to back up Walz’s statement that he was there during the uprising,” the news outlet said.
A local outlet, The Chadron Record, at the time revealed Walz “will teach American history and English as a second language at a post-secondary school in one of the four largest cities in China.” The report added: “He will leave in early August and spend at least a year in the nation.”
This is just the latest instance of Walz inflating his resume and embellishing aspects of his biography. The Minnesota governor has claimed for years that he is a “retired command sergeant major,” despite retiring without meeting the qualifications for that title. Additionally, Walz asserted that he was in the process of obtaining his doctorate, even though he had left the graduate program at St. Mary’s University in Minnesota years prior, The Beacon noted.
On Monday, Minnesota Public Radio also reported that Walz “was so proud of his extensive experience” traveling to China that he “occasionally used to exaggerate it”—claiming to have traveled there 30 times when his campaign now admits he has visited the country around 15 times. Walz made the claims about his proximity to the Tiananmen Square massacre in a May 2014 hearing of the Congressional Executive Commission on China.
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