Democrat vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was forced to answer questions about his controversial travel to China, and misstatements about those trips, during Tuesday night’s debate.
Walz has said he was in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989. But Minnesota Public Radio and other media outlets are now reporting that Walz actually did not travel to China until August of that year.
CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan asked Walz to explain the discrepancy.
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“Look, I grew up in a small rural Nebraska town, a town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on, and I’m proud of that service,” a visibly-shaky Walz said. “I joined the National Guard at 17, worked on family farms, and then I used the GI bill to become a teacher.”
Walz said that as a “passionate young teacher” he had “the opportunity in the summer of ’89 to travel to China—35 years ago.”
“I came back home and then started a program to take young people there. We would take basketball teams, we would take baseball teams, we would take dancers, and we would go back and forth to China,” Walz said, noting the trips were “to try and learn.”
“Look, my community knows who I am. They saw where I was at. I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community, and I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect,” Walz continued.
“And I’m a knucklehead at times,” Walz said.
Walz said his commitment “from the beginning” has been to “make sure that I’m there for the people.”
“Many times, I will talk a lot. I will get caught up in rhetoric. But being there, the impact it made, the difference it made in my life, I learned a lot about China,” Walz said. “I hear the critiques of this.”
Walz said he would “make the case that Donald Trump should have come on one of those trips with us.”
“I guarantee you he wouldn’t be, praising XI Jinping about Covid. And I guarantee you he wouldn’t start a trade war that he ends up losing,” Walz said. “So this is about trying to understand the world. It’s about trying to do the best you can for your community, and then it’s putting yourself out there and letting your folks understand what it is.”
He added: “My commitment, whether it be through teaching, which I was good at or whether it was being a good soldier or was being a good member of Congress. Those are the things that I think are the values that people care about.”
But Brennan pushed back, reminding Walz of the question, and again asking him to explain the discrepancy.
“All I said on this was, as I got there that summer and misspoke on this,” Walz said. “So I will just that’s what I’ve said. So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests went in and from that I learned a lot of what needed to be in in governance.”
Walz’s ties to China have come under the microscope since becoming Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate.
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House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., launched an investigation into Walz’s alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Comer revealed that Walz has “engaged and partnered with” Chinese entities, making him “susceptible” to the CCP’s strategy of “elite capture,” which seeks to co-opt influential figures in elite political, cultural and academic circles to “influence the United States to the benefit of the communist regime and the detriment of Americans.”
Comer has pointed to reports that Walz, while working as a teacher in the 1990s, organized a trip to China for Alliance High School students. The costs were reportedly “paid by the Chinese government.”
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Comer is investigating Walz’s 1994-created private company named “Educational Travel Adventures, Inc.,” which coordinated annual student trips to China until 2003 and was led by Walz.
The company reportedly “dissolved four days after he took congressional office in 2007.”
Comer said Walz has traveled to China an estimated “30 times.”
Comer has now issued a subpoena for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, compelling him to produce DHS records related to Walz’s alleged ties to the CCP.
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Walz, meanwhile, during a congressional hearing in 2016, said he had “been to China dozens of times.”
“I’ve been there about 30 times,” Walz told an agriculture-focused publication in 2016.
However, a Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson recently said to Minnesota Public Radio that the number was “closer to 15 times.”