Tim Walz Lies Again

For a number of years, Tim Walz has related an “origin story” about how and why he became involved in politics. He says that he brought some of his students–he was a high school geography teacher in Mankato, Minnesota–to a George W. Bush rally, but they were barred from getting in because one of them had a John Kerry sticker somewhere on his person.

Walz recounted the story in a Twitter thread that culminated with this:

You can hear Walz telling the story here. Kids Britannica, of all sources, tells Walz’s version:

Walz was inspired to enter politics by an experience he had while leading a field trip in 2004. He tried to take his students to a campaign rally in Mankato for George W. Bush, who was running for reelection as U.S. president. The group was turned away because one of the students had a sticker for John Kerry, Bush’s opponent in the election. Angered by the incident, Walz volunteered for the Kerry campaign.

But what really happened? The Washington Examiner has looked into Walz’s story. In fact, there was no “field trip.” Walz accompanied two young people, neither of whom was actually his student. And what happened is quite different from what Walz has claimed:

Walz has also said the Bush event staff’s discovery of the Kerry sticker prompted the moment of hostility. Important context is missing from his retelling of the events of that day.

That’s because Klaber and Burkhart had a public confrontation with the Bush campaign days before the 2004 rally. The teenagers were heard making “unfavorable comments” about Bush as they waited in line and were initially denied tickets, according to an archived news report.

When a candidate holds a rally, he is not obligated to admit people who are there to protest. If you doubt that proposition, show up at a Kamala Harris rally (if she ever holds one) in a MAGA hat.

After the story was reported by local news, because Klaber called the press, the Bush campaign contacted the teenagers and offered them tickets. In the lead-up to the 2004 election, there was heightened protest activity as police made arrests at campaign events. Klaber’s parents knew Walz and asked him to chaperone the teenagers to the event, expecting they may run into a problem.

They did: That day, as the trio waited in line, Bush campaign staffers told them that the Secret Service deemed Klaber and Burkhart a threat.

It is unlikely that they were an assassination threat, but they certainly were, as the Examiner article shows, Democratic Party activists who had no business disrupting a Bush rally. Walz, on the other hand, was admitted to the rally.

Was this really the incident that motivated Tim Walz to get involved in politics? It doesn’t seem so:

The sequence of events, as Walz tells it, inspired Walz to become politically involved. Days before the rally, Walz was already engaged in political protest.

A photo taken by then-Minnesota GOP aide Michael Brodkorb shows Walz clutching a sign before the rally that read, “Enduring Freedom Veterans for Kerry.”

In ‘04, I worked for the MNGOP. President Bush visited Mankota on August 4, 2004, and I took pictures of protesters outside the event. Tim Walz (pictured on the far-right) protested Bush’s visit to Minnesota. The thread below from Walz about his role at Bush’s event is dishonest. https://t.co/rEpzoF0yE9 pic.twitter.com/ygLiIEG4p1

— Michael Brodkorb (@mbrodkorb) August 17, 2020

Operation Enduring Freedom was the war in Afghanistan. As is well known, Walz served for a while in Italy, as part of a unit that provided logistical support, but never went anywhere near Afghanistan.

So Tim Walz has told media outlets for years that he got involved in politics because he was outraged over a field trip that he led being barred from a George W. Bush campaign event in 2004. In fact, there was no field trip, and the two students whom Walz accompanied were indeed barred from the event, either because of concerns by the Secret Service, or, more plausibly I think, because they were known John Kerry supporters who were there to protest or otherwise disrupt the rally. Walz himself was admitted.

And by this time, Walz was already a Democratic Party activist who had demonstrated against President Bush as an “Enduring Freedom Veteran.”

What is the true Tim Walz “origin story”? Why did he become involved in politics, as a far-left member of the Democratic Party? It goes back a long way before 2004. Tim Walz and his wife Gwen–also a left-wing activist–took their honeymoon in Communist China in 1994. This was five years after the massacre in Tiananmen Square. One can understand why a dedicated Maoist would want to honeymoon in the China of 1994, but why would anyone else? And that was only the beginning: Walz, perhaps the true Manchurian Candidate, has traveled to China, a country he obviously admires greatly, something like 30 times.

Walz’s depiction of himself as an innocent high school geography teacher, uninvolved in politics until he and his students were wronged by George W. Bush, is false–like pretty much everything Walz says. Any time Tim Walz is talking, if you assume that he is lying you are probably right.