‘I’m a knucklehead’: Tim Walz says his ‘misspoke’ about Tiananmen Square visit

Video credit: CBS News Vice Presidential Debate.

This story first appeared in the NPR Network’s live blog of the 2024 vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. For the latest on the campaign, head to NPR’s Elections page.

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Gov. Tim Walz was asked by vice presidential debate moderators Tuesday about his past trips to China, after discrepancies arose about how many times he visited and whether he was there during the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Walz has a long relationship with China and claimed he’d been there “about 30” or “dozens” of times, but after APM Reports questioned how that was possible, his campaign acknowledged the real number of trips from the U.S. to China was “closer to 15.”

Walz lived in China for about a year, teaching in the southern city of Foshan. His stint with the nonprofit organization WorldTeach started in the summer of 1989, just two months after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Starting in 1993, he led annual summer trips to China for students in the Nebraska and Minnesota high schools where he taught.

Walz also once described being in Hong Kong in May 1989, during the student uprising that culminated in the Tiananmen Square massacre, the reporting from APM Reports notes — an assertion that is belied by newspaper accounts at the time.

“I got there that summer and misspoke on this,” he said.

When asked about this discrepancy, Walz told moderators: “I’m a knucklehead at times.”