Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz was reportedly a nervous wreck ahead of the high-stakes CBS News debate against his Republican rival JD Vance on Tuesday, October 1. The building-up pressure supposedly led the former teacher to confide in his close aides about how he “doesn’t want Donald Trump to win. He doesn’t want Harris to think she made the wrong choice,” CNN reported.
Moreover, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar insisted that Harris’ running mate, though a “strong person,” is “just not a lawyer-debater type.” Regardless of the debate’s outcome or how some claims of the candidates failed the fact check, netizens significantly noticed that Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, maintained his cool through it all. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Governor, seemingly fighting nerves on Tuesday, let a gaffe slip into his arguments as he was questioned about his reported presence in Hong Kong in 1989 when the Tiananmen Square massacre claimed hundreds of lives.
The much-disputed claims birthed a discrepancy days ahead of the only vice presidential debate. Recent news reports from Nebraska suggested that Walz may actually have been in the US and instead embarked on his trip to China after the massacre. The point of contention inevitably made the centre stage on Tuesday as he was questioned about the severely differing narratives.
Also read | When Vance ‘fact-checked’ the CBS fact checkers, ‘Since you’re fact-checking me…’
Tim Walz admits he ‘misspoke’ about his decade-old statement about Tiananmen Square
Walz noticeably struggled to answer the question as he said, ‘I have tried to do the best I can. I have not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times.”
“Many times I will talk a lot, I will get caught up in the rhetoric,” he went on. “Being there, the impact it made, the difference it made in my life, I learned a lot about China.”
He finally admitted, “I got there that summer and misspoke.”
A decade ago, Walz said he was in Hong Kong in May 1989 during a 2014 Congressional hearing. Insisting on his being a witness to the harrowing development, Kamala Harris’ VP pick reiterated the message in February 2024 as well, “And as the events were unfolding, several of us went in. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.”
However, his story fell apart when local news reports published by The Washington Free Beacon in late September resurfaced the claims and asserted that he was in Nebraska in May and June of 1989.
Reactions to Tim Walz calling himself a “knucklehead”
Previously nicknamed “Tampon Tim,” the Governor of Minnesota earned a new alias after the Tuesday debate: “Knucklehead Walz,” as a flurry of memes erupted online after the slip-up.
Former Trump adviser and commentator Steve Cortes wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “He told the truth for once.” Similarly, conservative American media company The Daily Wire commented, “We’re all well aware, Tim,” in response to the Democratic vice presidential candidate’s misspoken moment.
Also read | Trump ‘Apprentice’ biopic trailer too controversial to be aired during presidential and VP debates: ABC, CBS
On the same night, Walz baffled the Internet with his another verbal blunder, “I’ve become friends with school shooters,” which only added to social media’s laughter hour. “Tim Walz is on a gaffe roll tonight. First, admits to being a knucklehead, then to befriending school shooters,” former AOL and AccuWeather journalist Andrew Tavani quipped. He also wrote, “Walz giving the Trump campaign some ad material for the final sprint with the knucklehead remark.
An X user chimed in, “Tim Walz refers to himself as a “knucklehead” in the same setting where he is trying to convince the nation to vote for him. Bold strategy I suppose.” Some even likened his “lying” behaviour to Pinochhio.
Meanwhile, another netizen said, “Walz saying knucklehead was the most comforting Midwestern dad thing I have heard this whole election cycle.”
