Former senior Obama adviser David Axelrod criticized Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz during a Tuesday segment over his explanation for falsely claiming that he traveled to Hong Kong during the deadly protests in 1989.
Walz gave a faltering answer during Tuesday night’s debate without giving a clear explanation of why he falsely claimed that he was in Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China that killed hundreds of people in the spring of 1989. Axelrod said Walz would have been more understandable answering that question in Chinese, indicating Walz’s answer was ineffective.
“[Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance] put on a very, very good performance tonight,” Axelrod said. “I think he was very, very good. He came out there, he wanted to be reasonable, he wanted to be cordial, all of the sort of acid lines that he delivers on the road he didn’t deliver and he probably profited from that … if I were Walz, I would’ve delivered the line about Tiananmen Square, that answer in Chinese, and it would’ve been more understandable than the one he gave.”
Walz said during the debate that he was in Hong Kong on a trip with his students in 1989, though he was not at the deadly protests.
“All I said on this was, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just – that’s what I’ve said,” Walz said during the debate. “I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests went in [sic]. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in, in governance.”
Axelrod further said that Vance’s flawed answers were about the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots and abortion.
“But, when you look at a dial group of this debate, the things that did the worse, Scott, were two things: his January 6 answer, that was worse than anybody, and his abortion answer, saying he never supported a national abortion ban, because people know that’s not true. So, that was one place where he couldn’t do the split screen effectively because people knew too much,” Axelrod said.
Walz previously said during a 2014 congressional hearing that he visited Hong Kong in “May of ’89,” one month before the massacre, CNN reported. The vice presidential candidate later said during a June 2019 radio interview that he was in Hong Kong on June 4, the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
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