| After a rocky start, Gov. Tim Walz steadied himself in a nationally televised debate last night. Walz, who is known to be a shaky debater, stumbled in the moderators’ first question about escalating tensions in the Middle East. He also struggled to answer questions about his time in China. Earlier this week, our colleagues at our investigative unit, APM Reports , reported that Walz was not in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in May 1989 as he had previously claimed (he visited later that summer). When moderators brought up our reporting, Walz struggled to answer the question. “I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said. For much of the debate, he tried to go on offense on issues related to abortion and Jan. 6. Walz pushed back on Vance’s claims that Minnesota’s abortion law is “barbaric.” He also called out Vance when he dodged questions about certifying this year’s election results. “When this is over, we need to shake hands,” Walz said. “And the winner needs to be the winner. This has to stop. It’s tearing our country apart.” Vance had this to say: “If we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I'm on board. But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had, I don't buy that.” At the end, they did shake hands.
From Walz’s hometown to an American Legion, Minnesotans reacted to the VP debate. We have reactions from debate watchers across the state. At the Loose Moose Saloon in downtown Mankato, patrons cheered for Walz, the former hometown high school football coach. At the American Legion Post in the southwest suburb of Chanhassen, supporters of the Trump-Vance ticket watched the vice presidential candidates face off. And at the Peoples’ Way, the former Speedway gas station at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, where officers murdered George Floyd in May 2020, people gathered to watch the debate, screened via a projector onto the side of the abandoned gas station building.
Minnesota came up a lot in last night’s debate. That was largely from Gov. Tim Walz talking about what he’s done in office and sometimes from JD Vance criticizing that. We tried to add context to most of the Minnesota mentions. You can read that review here with links to our past reporting.
Interestingly, Walz’s handling of the 2020 riots following the murder of George Floyd did not come up in the debate. Also notable: No mention of the Feeding Our Future scandal or Walz’s retirement from the National Guard to run for Congress right before his unit was deployed to Iraq. Republicans have spent the last two months blasting Walz on these issues. In the presidential debate, former President Donald Trump claimed rioters “burned down Minneapolis.” In a vice presidential debate preview press call on Monday, the Trump campaign invited two former Guard members in Walz’s unit to speak about their concerns with Walz’s, “stolen valor.”
The debate also included a poignant exchange between the candidates about shootings involving young people. “I got a 17 year-old and he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball. Those things don’t leave you,” Walz said in his response to a question about America’s gun violence experience. In a moment that seems out of place with some of the fiery rhetoric of this year’s election season, Vance offered his condolences. “Tim, first of all, I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting. I’m sorry about that. Christ, have mercy. It is awful.” Walz was referring to a 2023 shooting at the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center in St. Paul where a rec center employee shot a 16 year-old boy in the head after an argument. At the time, it was not reported that Gus Walz was at the rec center, but Walz confirmed that with MPR News back in March. Sam Stroozas has more on that.
Our reporting on Walz’s time in China had some primetime eyes on it. A piece of that story that is sticking with listeners is Walz’s claims that he was in Tiananmen Square during the May 1989 protests, which later resulted in a massacre in June of 1989. It was an assertion contradicted by newspaper accounts at the time. He was actually there later that summer in August, as stories published in a Nebraska newspaper show. “As the events were unfolding, several of us went in,” Walz said at a 2014 hearing commemorating the massacre's 25th anniversary. “I still remember hearing the train station in Hong Kong.” CNN’s KFile unit picked up the story and found additional audio of Waltz claiming he was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989 — the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre. “I was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, when, of course, Tiananmen Square happened. And I was in China after that. It was very strange cause, of course, all outside transmissions were blocked — Voice of America — and, of course, there was no, no phones or email or anything. So I was kind of out of touch. It took me a month to know the Berlin Wall had fallen when I was living there,” he said in a June 2019 WCCO radio interview.
Regionwide conflict is growing in the Middle East after Iran launched more than a hundred missiles into Israel yesterday. The attack came just hours after Israeli forces launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon. In the wake of the attack, President Joe Biden reaffirmed America’s support for Israel and described Iran’s attack as ineffective. Vice President Kamala Harris, in her own remarks, said she “fully supported” Biden’s order to help shoot down Iranian missiles and that her support for Israel was “unwavering.” In a statement released by his campaign, Trump said Biden and Harris lacked leadership and that, “the world is on fire and spiraling out of control.” Ellie spoke to U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar yesterday about the escalating tensions. "Nobody benefits from a regional war,” Omar said. “I do hope that the United States does have a broader approach to this that does actually help end this conflict.” Omar is one of the leading pro-Palestinian voices in Congress and has been outspoken in her demands for a ceasefire in Gaza.
A debate postscript (in case this is the final one in this presidential cycle): the ad hoc nature of this year’s debates for the highest office in the country is a problem. Given how consequential the debates were — an incumbent president got pushed out based on his poor performance and his challenger/predecessor had a rough one the next time — there needs to be a better way. Take last night’s vice presidential debate on CBS, for instance. CBS gained the rights to host and moderate the debate and that station chose to do the debate from its New York broadcast headquarters. Then, the network denied access to multiple outlets, including this one, to be on site, claiming a lack of capacity in a venue it selected. Never mind that it granted cable networks their requisite coterie of partisan analysts on site; they forked over steep fees to secure space. Sure, we can all watch and listen to these debates live and on many platforms. But other outlets shouldn’t have to rely on those feeds to cover prominent people from their own territory or in a fashion each chooses. Do better candidates — and do better major outlets — because 2028 will be upon us before you know it. |
