The Democrat Party’s nominee for vice president has built a fantastic career for himself that has taken him close to the peak of a presidential ticket but it appears to have been built on a house of cards.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has been accused of stolen valor for the way he has described his time in the military, has spoken about what inspired him to get into politics many times.
The way he tells the story, he, as a high school teacher, took two students to a campaign rally for former President George W. Bush. However, when event staff noticed that one of the students had a John Kerry sticker on his backpack, they were denied entry, Walz has said.
But the governor’s story contains some inaccuracies that have him facing charges of lying, The Washington Examiner reported.
The first inaccuracy is that he was admitted into the rally, a source familiar with what happened said to The Examiner on the condition of anonymity.
And the teenagers he attended the rally with, Matt Klaber and Nick Burkhart, were not students of his.
The report said that the two teenagers were initially denied access not for the Kerry sticker but because they were involved in a confrontation earlier in the week that made local news.
And even as he said the incident was the “moment that I decided to run for office” because he had “never been overly involved in political campaigns,” the evidence obtained by The Examiner shows that he was already active in politics, having attended an anti-Bush rally days before the rally he said he was denied entry to, a photo obtained by The Examiner showed.
“He was looking for an origin story,” former Bush campaign staffer who was in Minnesota in 2004, Chris Faulkner, said. “And he made one up.”
The governor posted a thread on X in 2020 in which he described what he said happened and referred to the two teenagers as his students, which he was not.
“The last sitting President to visit my hometown of Mankato, Minnesota was George W. Bush in 2004. As a high school teacher and football coach, I brought two fellow teachers’ children to the speech as an educational experience. We were denied entry because the students had previously volunteered for the democratic party. Having just returned from military duty in Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom I wished to hear directly from the President and my students, regardless of political party, deserved to witness the historical moment of a sitting president coming to our city,” he said.
“Above all, I was struck by how deeply divided our country was becoming that a veteran & a group of high schoolers would be turned away at the door. It was at this moment that I decided to run for office. While I had a passion for politics, I had never been overly involved in political campaigns, and many people thought that a high school teacher and football coach didn’t stand a chance,” the governor said.
“Two years after President Bush’s visit, I was elected to represent southern Minnesota in Congress. Fourteen years later, I was elected as the Governor of the great State of Minnesota,” he said.
“Ahead of President Trump’s visit today to my hometown, I think about the next generation of leaders who are stepping up to meet this moment. Don’t wait for your moment, take it. You may just be governor someday,” he said.
The students, who were not actually taking his classes, were involved in an altercation with Bush’s campaign staff days before the event and one of the students, who was already a Democrat activist, called local media to report it.
They were then offered tickets to the next event, and one of their moms asked Walz to chaperone them, which he did.
But when they got to the event they were denied entry because they were informed that Secret Service deemed them to be a threat.
“As a soldier, I told them I had a right to see my commander in chief,” the governor said at a campaign event in 2006.
The students were barred from the event but Walz, who was photographed protesting the former president prior to the rally, was allowed in and did attend the event.
In the protest, he held a sign that read “Enduring Freedom Veterans for Kerry,” the name of the decades-long operation in Afghanistan — where he never served.
