At a 2014 congressional hearing held to mark the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tim Walz, then a congressman representing Minnesota’s first district, recalled being in Hong Kong when the Chinese Communist Party crushed the student protests that had roiled the country since mid-April of 1989. The unforgettable crackdown came 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 the New York Times, CBS News, and National Public Radio, among others. In reality, local news reports show that Walz was at home in Nebraska in May and June of 1989, as protests convulsed China and the government’s response turned the world’s attention to its gross human rights violations. He wouldn’t depart for China until August.
Contemporaneous news reports show Walz touring a National Guard storeroom in Alliance, Nebraska, in May 1989. They indicate that Walz did not leave the United States until August of that year, at least two months after the student protests ended 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.
It is but the latest example of Walz inflating his resume and exaggerating parts of his biography. The Minnesota governor claimed for years to be a "retired command sergeant major," though he retired without completing the requirements to earn the title. Walz also stated that he was in the process of getting his doctorate degree years after he left the graduate program at St. Mary’s University in Minnesota, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
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.
The student protests and the massacre "certainly had an enduring influence on me as a young man," he said.
The New York Times went on to report, inaccurately, that Walz was in "Hong Kong, just across the Chinese border, when People’s Liberation Army tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to crush pro-democracy protests."
Walz "settled into the cocoon of daily life on a small-town campus, even as the chaos of the Tiananmen Square crackdown more than 1,100 miles away rippled across the country," reported the Times.
A news article published May 16, 1989, includes a photograph of Walz touring a National Guard storeroom in Alliance, Nebraska. The article noted that Walz was "tak[ing] over the job" as a support specialist at the armory.
In April 1989, the Chadron Record reported that Walz had been accepted into a volunteer teaching program in China and "will leave in early August and spend at least a year in the nation."
Minnesota Public Radio also cited a third local news article from August 11, 1989, that said Walz would "leave Sunday en route to China" after he had almost "given up participating [in the trip] earlier this summer during the student revolts in parts of China."
The date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown holds a special significance to Walz, according to his wife Gwen. The couple got married on the fifth anniversary of the massacre, with Walz telling his wife that he "wanted to have a date he'll always remember."