Tim Walz’s Political Origin Story
An oft-told tale turns out to be bullshit.
Memeorandum is highlighting reports in the right-leaning media questioning Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s story about how he decided to run for political office.
The more developed of the two is from Washington Examiner investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky (“Tim Walz’s political origin story does not add up“):
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) has long described the moment in 2004 that inspired him to run for public office. In Walz’s telling, the “folksy” high school teacher and two of his students attended a campaign rally for President George W. Bush as an educational experience. However, Walz says, all three of them were denied entry upon event staffers noticing a John Kerry sticker on one of the students’ wallets — an exchange that the Atlantic dubbed a “KGB-style interrogation.”
There’s just one problem: This version of the political origin story for the Democratic vice presidential nominee, who is already facing “stolen valor” accusations over claims about his military service from combat veterans, contains significant inaccuracies.
For one, Walz was admitted into the Bush rally, according to a source familiar, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the August 2004 event. The two teenagers Walz arrived with, Matt Klaber and Nick Burkhart, were not his students, the Washington Examiner confirmed.
Moreover, the teenagers were barred from the event after a confrontation that made local news earlier in the week — leading to them initially being denied tickets.
And while Walz framed the squabble as the “moment that I decided to run for office” since he had “never been overly involved in political campaigns,” evidence suggests that Walz was already politically active by that point: He participated days earlier in an anti-Bush protest before the 2004 Bush rally in Mankota, Minnesota, on Aug. 4, an image confirms.
This report is based on public records, including Walz’s prior comments, documents obtained by the Washington Examiner, archived local news reports, and information provided by two sources with direct knowledge of the 2004 Bush event.
“He was looking for an origin story,” Chris Faulkner, a former Bush campaign staffer in Minnesota in 2004 who worked the August rally, told the Washington Examiner. “And he made one up.”
Walz, the governor of Minnesota and 2024 running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris, has said Burkhart and Klaber were his own students. This is untrue.
“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,” Walz posted on social media in 2020. Walz said in an interview with a Minnesota news outlet in 2022 that he told the Bush event’s staff he was “their teacher,” referring to Burkhart and Klaber, upon the trio being questioned to get into the rally.
Burkhart did not attend Walz’s school. He went to Mankato East High School, according to records obtained by the Washington Examiner. He would later volunteer for Walz’s successful campaign in 2006.
Klaber, the other teenager, was not a student at Mankato West Senior High School, where Walz taught, at the time of the 2004 event. He never even took a class with Walz while attending the school, according to a source familiar.
A then-active Democratic activist, Klaber was part of the Gustavus College Democrats and would later volunteer for Walz’s congressional campaign in 2006, according to college meeting minutes reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
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.
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. Walz, in his retelling of the matter in 2006, said he was indignant. “As a soldier, I told them I had a right to see my commander in chief,” Walz said at a 2006 campaign event in Minnesota.
The Bush campaign staffers interrogated Walz and wanted to know if he supported Bush, according to Walz. But while the students were barred from the event, Walz was not, and walked right inside, one source said.
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.”
The Enduring Freedom title is known to refer to people who served in Afghanistan — something Walz never did. Walz spent time in Italy and Norway supporting NATO forces. The 24-year Army National Guard veteran did not see combat.
“It’s clear he was politically involved before that moment,” Faulkner told the Washington Examiner. “He was protesting in front of the ticket distribution center. It’s all bulls***.”
The other highlighted report from The Daily Wire (“Tim Walz Says He Got Into Politics Because His Students Were Kicked Out of a Bush Rally. That Doesn’t Seem to Be The Case.“) essentially re-tells the Examiner story and includes a lot of clips from Twitter.
Both outlets claim to have reached out to Walz’s team and not to have gotten a response.
Despite some gratuitous jabs unrelated to the matter at hand, I find Kaminsky’s report credible and thus Walz’s repeated claims regarding the matter to be what Faulkner labels them to be: bullshit.
Politicians fib about their background with enough regularity that this isn’t disqualifying. But it’s deeply disappointing. Not only does he paint himself as the hero of a story in which he’s a provocateur, but he uses minor students—who aren’t even his students—as props. Further, he repeatedly smears the Bush campaign as authoritarian thugs when they, in fact, acted properly.
Like his exaggerations of his military record, I doubt this will resonate with many folks who aren’t already predisposed to vote for Trump. It’s not like his opponents are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. But, again, I find it disappointing.
I don’t know why I am still shocked by the double-standard, but it gets me every time.
If he was actively chaperoning the students, they were “his students.” Not sure how he was chaperoning if he got in and they did not.
So there was just nothing to blog about today?
The last time I cared about the “how I decided to run for office” story of a candidate was never. Don’t care this time either.
The Bush campaign thought 2 kids who maybe made a smart-ass remark about Bush were threats? What did they do–ask where were the WMDs?
@Tony W: There’s no “double standard.” Trump is routinely presented as a liar, so much so that it’s now just baked into out perceptions of him.
@Michael Reynolds: @just nutha: Walz was, until a couple weeks ago, a completely unknown person outside of Minnesota. He has been rolled out as this “Aw shucks” schoolteacher, coach, and Command Sergeant Major motivated by his outrage over how his students were treated and his right to see his commander-in-chief. That he lied about both that origin story and the nature of his military service strikes me as interesting. Given that the alternative is Trump/Vance, it would take something monumental to change my vote. But it’s interesting nonetheless.
@James Joyner: The double standard is that we don’t see think pieces of this length on every lie, exaggeration, or act of fraud that Donald commits every day.
Sure, when a D does it, it’s remarkable – but there is absolutely a double standard when one party’s candidate requires this level of scrutiny to find something, anything, to complain about, and the other candidate commits more felonies before second breakfast each day than most people do their entire life.
Just because Trump has managed to lower the bar for his own behavior to a position just north of hell, doesn’t mean that bar has been lowered for the Democratic side.
Well, you never know, this being a “Vibes” election and all. But certainly wouldn’t shake those who are already, Democrat today, Democrat tomorrow, Democrat forever.
I don’t get it. There is no need for these fibs.
And I don’t see where anyone gains anything by making excuses for the fibbers.
@Michael Reynolds: So there was just nothing to blog about today?
He could have gone with Trump’s team doubling down on how they were very respectful at Arlington, but they had every right to use Arlington as a photo op, and they have video evidence that they were in the right, and they’ll release it soon, as in never.
If a person finds Walz deeply disturbing, Trump should make them swallow lye.
@James Joyner:
James, if we went into every story you’ve ever told about yourself, we’d find some bullshit. Not because you’re a liar, but because that’s how memory works. Memory is not a photograph, memory is a story we tell ourselves and others.
Look at it this way: some percentage of humans are cowards. Zero percent tell stories about how they were cowards.
I was told a story just the other day about how as a toddler I went on a train from California to Louisiana with my uncle to catch up to my mother and new husband. I have no memory of that. Had you asked me if I’d ever taken such a trip, I’d have confidently rejected the idea. Would that be a lie? Or is my uncle lying? Or is it a story my uncle transposed from some other true event?
Michael Reynolds claims he was never on a train to Louisiana, but we have the tickets! He’s a liiiiiiar!
One of the less popular functions of a spouse is to question the stories told by their partner. Husbands and wives very often have quite different versions of an event they were both part of. I suspect you’ve encountered this. And yet, neither spouse is lying, they are remembering different parts of an event, remembering emotion and internal monolog. Because that’s how memory works.
My husband claims he was perfectly nice to those people we had dinner with that time. But in reality he was a pissy bitch! I can’t stay with a liar, I want a divorce!
We’re talking about an event what, 20 years ago? Do you think maybe some of the stories you tell about your life 20 years ago have been gilded a bit? Can you imagine how many times Katherine or I have been asked about the origin of Animorphs? We each have a version, neither version is 100% true, and neither version is a lie. We both try to get lose to the truth but FFS, we were not taking notes thinking, ‘someday, decades from now, superfans will grill us on the how and when and why?’
Memory is turned into story and story replaces memory. Neither story nor memory are 100% accurate, but neither is a lie.
Reading through the differences in the story and the claimed reality, I’m not seeing much of a difference. Walt’s version is slightly streamlined, like he had told the story countless times.
The Bush campaign turned away the kids. Different day, but close enough.
If the parents asked him to chaperone the kids, and he was bringing them as a learning experience, it’s a reasonable streamlining.
He attended a protest a few days earlier. That doesn’t mean that he was planning a run for congress then. Decisions gel into place over some time, and then you decide at one moment when it comes together.
The sign at the protest — if he was attending with an organized group, there’s every chance he was just given the sign.
This is slightly more scandalous than when his claims of being given an award by the chamber of commerce as a kid were revealed to be a lie — he was given the award by the junior chamber of commerce. Scandal!
Overall, it’s clear that Tim Walz likes to tell stories. And like many people who tell stories he’s kinda full of it. As in ‘students I chaperoned’ are transformed into ‘my students’. I don’t understand how this can possibly overturn what happened, which is that the two students were denied entry. He’s not on the stand and this isn’t testimony.
I think people raised on absolute lies have trouble with telling stories, to be honest.
Just to be clear, the writing in these articles is simply bad – time jumps around confusingly, and the “facts” are blurred through that confusion to make an issue out of nothing. You’ve been suckered by crappy writing in the g-d Washington Examiner and a headline that makes a splash claim without appearing to care that even within the article the “splash claim” is more like an errant drop or two.
Just take this series of ‘graphs:
Okay, so from this you would think that context will reveal quite a bit. Let’s hold our breaths while that context comes out!
So the context is that they didn’t have Kerry stickers, they were heard making comments while in line? I dunno, seems a little less like “context” and more like “quibbly detail” that the Kerry stickers weren’t what did it, but rudeness toward W was. (Worse, you can’t entirely tell if the “conflict” that they had was “they made rude comments while in line days earlier” because the writing is so shoddy.)
Oh, so they had a conflict when they were heard making rude comments while in line days before the event, then they told the press, then they were ultimately offered tickets. But they were initially denied tickets for those comments. And Walz was acting as a chaperone to the ticketing part of the event because the kids’ parents thought there might be a problem and felt that Walz would be sympathetic and/or helpful. Likely because he was…wait for it!…a teacher.
I mean, this is certainly “context”, but other than “it wasn’t Kerry stickers, it was saying mean things about W while waiting for tickets” still seems like the item that’s being reported here.
Right. So the SS deemed them a “threat” for those comments and then detained them? That’s not just a “conflict”, that’s a detention and interrogation – which sounds an awful lot like the story. (This also makes it clear he was chaperoning them while they were in line, so we’re back at Rally Day – 2 days.)
Well now we’ve just stuffed Rally Day – 2 days right next to Rally Day and claimed that there’s a lie. Because the timeline seems to be that Walz would have also been pulled out during the “while in line” thing, which was days before the rally itself. And then Bush’s team offered at least the others tickets after they realized it was bad PR and were called out. But according to the author, the story is clearly bullshit because Walz was able to just walk right inside, because we have decided to ignore all interceding events, including the one where they were offered tickets.
Just to write down a timeline:
R-2d: Kids make mean comments about Bush while waiting for tickets. They are deemed a “threat”, perhaps pulled from line/interrogated?, and denied tickets.
R-2d? R-1d? [this is once again part of the “really bad writing” in this article, as it’s not clear]: Kids are featured in some sort of news item complaining about the unfairness of it.
R-1d? R-0d?: Kids are offered tickets.
R-0d: Walz “walks right in” and is photographed at the rally. As one with a ticket would be able to do.
The story is that they were “denied entry” and treated unfairly. That happened. On R-2d, that happened. That they went to the press and the campaign recognized the PR bullshittery of it and “righted the wrong” is not the story he’s conveying. (It’s ultimately irrelevant whether he was able to persuade them that he was not a threat on R-2d, because the idea is that the kids – the direct participants – were told they would be unable to engage with the sitting president.)
This is like saying that a person who has $10k stolen from their car and says, “That’s when I learned to lock my doors!” can’t use that as a story if the thief gave the money back 2 days later.
Also, attending protests is not the same as running for office. Shit, I’m “politically active” – I’ll put signs up in my yard and attend protests, and I’ll call and write my legislators and call them out on bullshit. But I’m not running for office. So even the premise of this is poor.
How you get suckered by the Examiner is beyond me. How you get suckered by such poor writing is an even greater mystery.
@JKB:
Says the guy for voting Trump no matter what he does.
Why make such a vacuous comment that simply mirrors your own behavior, and, in turn, highlights the lies and bad behavior you are willing to tolerate versus Democrats haveing to tolerate some exaggerations about a relatively unimportant fact?
This isn’t, for example, cheating on your wives level of deception, committing business fraud, hawking fake products, or trying to block the FBI from doing their jobs (among a hundred over examples).
I mean, take the log out of your own eye.
@Gustopher: This is similar to my reading of the pieces as well. It is less pure bullshit as it is a combo of exaggeration and streamlining.
@ptfe:
I agree. I started to parse the story as quoted v. what I thought I understood the story to be, but gave up.
Once again Joyner leaps to a conclusion that is not warranted. And this subhead is just BS:
“An oft-told tale turns out to be bullshit.”
As ptfe lays out in detail and Michael Reynolds describes this is indeed an oft told tale which has been streamlined. The **essence** of the story is true. These young men were denied access, Walz was asked and did chaperone them and it became something that animated Walz.
It is **NOT** bullshit Joyner. Jesus you really are way, way over the line.
@Tony W:
Because Trump is a known commodity and Walz is being introduced to the public. The major papers ran fact check after fact check on Trump until they ran out of Pinnochios.
@Michael Reynolds: I think it’s possible that Walz has told this story so many times that he now believes it. But he was telling it in his first campaign for Congress, when it was fresh in his mind. The whole thing was rather clearly a set-up.
@ptfe: I think you’re working very hard to construct truth out of a series of fibs.
@James Joyner:
Perhaps.
But can you make sense of this paragraph?
It was stuff like that (and this is probably the worst example) that made me give up trying to sort out the narrative that the piece was trying to construct.
@James Joyner: I think you’re working very hard to construct truth out of a series of fibs.
Perhaps you can propose a counter-timeline based on the articles in question that shows this is, in fact, a “series of fibs”. I mean, I put the timeline in there for a reason: the articles just lay out what appears to have happened. If you’ve got some other evidence to drop, by all means do it. But ffs don’t patronize me with this kind of bullshit response.
@JKB:
Rather than parading your ludicrous hypocrisy, do us a favor, as a true MAGAt and tell us: WTF is Trump’s position on abortion?
@ptfe: Exactly this.
The story is from poor and known to be biased source, there’s nobody quoted who isn’t either anonymous or a Republican operative, and at each step, plausible and reasonable explanations for Walz’ statements are ignored. (Also, it repeats without justification the “stolen valor” horseshit which IIRC even James thought was overboard.)
It is entirely reasonable for Walz to say that running for Congress was his first political act, if one reasonably accepts the standard of running for office being the political act he’s talking about. What’s completely unreasonable is to assume that a person who was moved to run for Congress never attended a protest or political meeting. What’s next: “Walz says running for Congress was his first political act, but we’ve discovered he regularly attended Mankato Democratic party meetings and even went to their cookout!”
It is entirely reasonable for Walz to carry a sign at a protest saying he’s a veteran of Enduring Freedom since he was deployed in support of that war. Not only did he make the sacrifice of re-joining the NG after 9/11, when he had his 20 in, he also deployed overseas while he had young children at home. What’s unreasonable is to consider him carrying a sign in a protest unrelated to the Bush campaign event as provocative, and to accept without comment the diminishment of the real sacrifice that it took for him to re-up and deploy.
The least reasonable part of this is casting the kids he was taking to the rally as “non-students”. Are we sure they never attended a class with him? Or even had some other interaction such as being part of a club or organization at the school where Walz was an advisor? It is very reasonable for teachers who care about the kids in their care to adopt a pretty wide-gauge view of what a “student” is.
I’m surprised that James endorses this shoddy piece of journalism, and it really makes me question whether there’s Army snobbery involved here, since he seems like a very eager audience for anti-Walz propaganda, which is what any clear-eyed, skeptical news consumer can see that the Examiner piece is.
@James Joyner:
Nonsense. You have no logical basis in fact for that conclusion, that is an assumption you are making, based on a badly-written story. You are imputing motive. So, ‘rather clearly,” then is a lie, since it is clearly not clear. Right? Maybe you’d best resign your job right now.
“Naive” is not a word I’d ever have thought to apply to you, but in this you are simply naive. You don’t understand what you’re talking about. And you are leaping to an unsupported conclusion based on very little. Not to mention falling into the same mental trap as so much of the media in comparing grains of sand to entire beaches.
ETA: Put it this way: ALL memory is a lie to one degree or another. That’s why eyewitness testimony is so often wrong. Were you to apply the falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus rule, you and every single person you’ve ever met, including all of us here, are liars.
I read this story and understand the salient part to be that the Bush campaign told two kids they weren’t welcome at a political rally because they’re scared of anyone not 100% George Bush, even teenagers.
People like James read this story and they think: what’s Tim Walz trying to pull? These kids were up to no good. No wonder the President of the United States did not want two teenagers at his rally.
I honestly don’t think James gets why this might be a political origin story.
Almost all origin stories are bullshit. This is particularly true in higher-office politics.
The vast majority of politicians have massive egos. They start “running” for office as kids. Think Tracey Flick.
Most startups were not really conceived in garages. Most politicians run for office because they want to be in politics, not because they are martyrs for a cause. For some reason, we desire a halo effect for this line of work, when really we should be asking: “is this person competent? Does this person have a world view that aligns with mine? Will this person know when to compromise and when to refuse to?”
Ultimately, NONE of this matters. It doesn’t matter what Walz said got him into politics. It doesn’t matter what got Harris into politics. The only thing that matters is that this pair believes in democracy and the rule of law, and Trump DOES NOT. He literally does not GAF.
That’s the choice. Everything else is BS.
@Michael Reynolds:
“Naive” is a word I’ve applied to him for ages, at least when it comes to race, police shootings, and the like. It’s the least pejorative adjective I can find, as I don’t think he is being willfully ignorant on the subject, just that he has not really thought things through and doesn’t believe race taints everything in America. (And he has gotten better on this)
This seems like it might be a bit worse than naive, as there isn’t an optimistic worldview that he is holding to. Either a case of “Republicans are going to Republican” or he has a particular animosity towards Walz that causes him to shut off his critical thinking. If I had to guess, he has swallowed the “stolen valor” narrative, and lets it color his thoughts.
“Further, he repeatedly smears the Bush campaign as authoritarian thugs when they, in fact, acted properly.”
Wait a second. So the dirty tricks, manufactured scandals and fascist lawfare are not unique to Trump and his supporters? The Dems and media do this against every Republican?
@Steven L. Taylor:
You beat me to this.
It definitely fits under the “every accusation is a projection” category.
BTW, I think that’s an ok position for one to hold. And, if one hold it you also shouldn’t be attacking the opposite side for exactly the same behavior (or suggesting in some way that it’s wrong). Ditto yesterday’s comment about political expediency.
All that needs to be said is that the story is from the Washington Examiner. That means it should be ignored.
@ptfe: I appreciate the detailed fisking, but I have to take issue with, “crappy writing in the g-d Washington Examiner”. More likely practiced writing, executed carefully, and rewarded by their editors.
@Michael Reynolds:
Well said, MR. And if we’re talking about bullshyt stories: You know where you hear the BIGGEST bullshyt stories? In Baptist and Evangelical churches when folks are giving their conversion story. Gosh, the most exaggerated clap trap you’ll not want to hear on Sunday and Wednesday.
@Cheryl Rofer:
That was my first take, but then the Washington Post is running an opinion piece now by Kathleen Parker titled “Tim Walz isn’t exactly as he seems” which has as its central premise “Walz, too, is a bit of a fibber.”
Mastheads and Bylines are nuances we can’t afford. Washington Examiner oxygen is still oxygen.
@James Joyner:
Hahaha! Good job today, Doc J. You kicked the crap outta that hornets’ nest!
@James Joyner:
As with most “bothsides” the issue isn’t binary, but degree. In this case a couple orders of magnitude. You excuse this as Walz being the new, unknown candidate. In 2016 Trump was new and unknown, outside NYC. Did NYT or WAPO put this level of effort into digging into Trump’s known and suspected criminal activities in 2016? Did they dig into Trump’s actually crooked foundation the way they dug into the Clinton Foundation? And emails and Benghazi?
@mistermix: This is another of those days when I remind myself that Dr. Joyner is, ultimately, still a Republican and how amazing it really is that he is willing to vote Dem considering how many of his peers are equally repulsed by Trump and will still vote “R.”
I’m really curious now what made JJ decide to elevate this story.
I’ve said this before on here about some of the commenters, but this is all of a piece where Republicans intentionally cartoon-skew nitpicky details to avoid talking about anything with depth.
Does Walz have a point about guns? Yes? Better attack him for not shaving on Tuesday, maybe make that the focus of the campaign. And people like James are willing to believe it’s on the up-and-up, people “just asking questions!” that happens to make the weird dick-measuring of military pseudo-ranks seem like A Pattern Of Fibbing.
Meh, I think this just reminds us he is a politician. He has a great story and he embellishes it. (Actually, how many people over 50 dont have a few stories they embellish.) My takeaway would be that when he is telling personal stories they are mostly correct but he will change a few details to make it sound better. At any rate, he doesnt need to outrun the lion, just the other guys and in this case the other guys arent even trying (to be honest).
Steve
PS- The IUI vs IVF thing was interesting to me given my profession. My experience is that almost no one knows the difference and even those engaged in fertility sometimes just refer to everything as IVF.)
@DeD: my husband used to make fun of what he called the “if it wasn’t for Jesus, I’d be dead” stories.
@ptfe:
To underscore your point, this story – not fibbing by the Dem VP candidate about why he went into politics, but rather an open profession of beliefs from the GOP VP candidate indicating what he would use politics to accomplish – could have been elevated.
@Monala:
Lol. That’s pretty much it!
Yes, that ‘Stolen Valor’ story was a real eye-opener.
Well, thank god Chris LaCivita is there to out Walz as an unpatriotic lying greaseball.
And don’t get me started on Kamala Harris.
I mean, she failed to list her McDonald’s job on the CV that she submitted in 1987 for an application to the Alameda County DA’s office for a position as a law clerk.
Clearly that job was relevant to her application for a LEGAL position.
To me, the big takeaway here is… this is still the best the Trump campaign has against them. Even if this story were unimpeachably true — that is, if there was a single named source who isn’t a Republican operative and if it were written in a style that was not clearly intended to imply more than what’s there — it’s still a nothingburger.
Now it’s a problem if honorable and intelligent people such as JJ choose to fall for and spread this bullshit, because the whole goal is for them to be able to say “maybe not all of these things we’re spreading are true, but there sure are a lot of them, so he must be shady.” But on its own, it’s pathetic.
And every day there’s new tape of Vance insisting that women who don’t like exactly the life he chooses for them are miserable losers who don’t deserve rights.
@wr: To me, the big takeaway here is… this is still the best the Trump campaign has against them. Even if this story were unimpeachably true — that is, if there was a single named source who isn’t a Republican operative and if it were written in a style that was not clearly intended to imply more than what’s there — it’s still a nothingburger.
But you can already see the Republican “fibber” narrative being laundered into the mainstream press. It begins innocuously enough with a “well he wasn’t technically telling the full truth about his military years!” (blown by the wind into WaPo and NYT) and now based on a really poorly-written article, James is simply declaring that Walz’s story is “bullshit” because he has a narrative already spun up in his head.
You expect people like JKB to be suckered by these things, finding stupid crap on RW sites and parroting it until they’re hoarse. But a trash article has been posted with an explosive hed in the Examiner – which doesn’t even clear the lowest bar for “journalism” – and is repeated in the NY Post (many people are saying!) and opined about in WaPo. Now the James-level people have heard it, so it becomes Surely At Least Partly True. And obviously they’ll be able to come up with another 20 or 30 instances of Walz saying something that isn’t 100% accurate, each one just enough to notch that narrative until this wholesome guy from Minnesota becomes a lying sack of lies.
Republicans are desperate to counter the Vance/weird line. They need something – anything – and they’ve decided to try mainstreaming Walz/fibber. Sorry James, you’re a vector for the bullshit. You’re falling for the same old crap, the same dirty pathways for pointless garbage to be sucked up into the political discourse and talked about in the same breath as health care and climate change.
@James Joyner:
I can’t see anything in the story that proves the incident he cited was not the moment he started considering a much deeper personal involvement in politics than just attending events.
@Michael Reynolds: You have the right of it. Memories aren’t 100 percent accurate. And stories get streamlined, too.
I mean, let’s look at just one of the things protested: Walz called the students “his” students. But they weren’t attending any class of his.
Is it possible that they were football players, who Walz coached? Or maybe they were in the GSA that he was advisor to? Or maybe he just interacted with them as lunchroom monitor? Or maybe he’s the kind of teacher who thinks of every single student at his school as “his” student?
Calling this a lie is ridiculous. I did academic speech for a long time – every source attributed, every statement carefully framed and hedged – until I realized that for most people it added no value at all. When you are in court, or writing a research paper, you are careful with that stuff.
Otherwise, a little simplification for the sake of directness is valuable.