Vice presidential hopeful Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz once again called himself a “fool” when 60 Minutes questioned him about false statements he’s made in the past.
Walz first used the folksy contempt on the debate stage last week when he was asked about a claim he made about being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Minnesota Public Radio News and APM Reports first reported that Walz did not travel to the regions until months later.
‘I think people know who I am. And I think they know the difference between someone who expresses an emotion, tells a story, gets a date wrong… versus a pathological liar like Donald Trump,” Walz told 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker.
Whitaker had pressed on whether that kind of “misrepresentation” was anything more than being a “fool.”
He then asked the Democratic vice presidential candidate if Walz could be “trusted with the truth.”
‘Yeah. Well, I can, I think I can,” the Minnesota governor responded. “Sometimes I admit I’m a fool, but the people closest to me know I keep my word.”
Vice presidential hopeful Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz once again called himself a “fool” when 60 Minutes questioned him about false statements he’s made in the past.
Walz’s Tiananmen Square response on the debate stage last week was one of the most surprising moments during his more than 90-minute exchange with the Republican vice presidential candidate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
Even before doing the ‘fool’ dig, Walz gave a confusing explanation for the discrepancy.
“Well, now to the people who didn’t make it to the top of this,” Walz began. “I grew up in a small rural town in Nebraska, population 400. A town where you rode your bike with your friends until the street lights came on, and I’m proud of that service.”
“I joined the National Guard at 17, worked on family farms, and then used the GI Bill to become a teacher, passionate about it, a young teacher,” he continued. “My freshman year, I had the opportunity in the summer of ’89 to go to China, 35 years ago, to do it.”
Walz then explained how he started a program to bring young people to China.
“We had basketball teams, baseball teams, dancers and we went back and forth to China,” he said. “The point was to try and learn.”
After the autobiographical sketch, Walz continued and said that his “community knows who I am.”
Gov. Tim Walz (R) first used the term “fool” to describe how he “badmouthed” his whereabouts during the Tiananmen Square massacre during last week’s debate against Sen. JD Vance (L).
“They saw where it was,” he continued. ‘They, look, I’ll be the first to tell you that I’ve poured my heart out into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I haven’t been perfect. And sometimes I’m a fool, but that’s what it’s always been about.
Walz criticized the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, for his praise of Chinese President Xi Jinping for his handling of COVID and his trade policies, although at the end of his response, moderator Margaret Brennan noted that the vice presidential candidate never responded to his ask.
‘Governor, to follow up on that, the question was: can you explain the discrepancy?’ she asked.
Then he gave a briefer explanation.
“No, all I said about this was that I got there that summer and I was wrong about this, so that’s just what I said,” Walz said. “So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest, I went in and from there I learned a lot of what is needed in governance.”