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Fact-Checking Claims About Tim Walz’s Record

Republicans have leveled inaccurate or misleading attacks on Mr. Walz’s response to protests in the summer of 2020, his positions on immigration and his role in the redesign of Minnesota’s flag.

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By Linda Qiu

Since Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was announced as the Democratic nominee for vice president, the Trump campaign and its allies have gone on the attack.

Mr. Walz, a former teacher and football coach from Nebraska who served in the National Guard, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 and then as Minnesota’s governor in 2018. His branding of former President Donald J. Trump as “weird” this year caught on among Democrats and helped catapult him into the national spotlight and to the top of Vice President Kamala Harris’s list of potential running mates.

The Republican accusations, which include questions over his military service , seem intended at undercutting a re-energized campaign after President Biden stepped aside and Ms. Harris emerged as his replacement at the top of the ticket. Mr. Trump and his allies have criticized, sometimes inaccurately, Mr. Walz’s handling of protests in his state, his immigration policies, his comments about a ladder factory and the redesign of his state’s flag.

Here’s a fact check of some claims.

What Was Said

“Because if we remember the rioting in the summer of 2020, Tim Walz was the guy who let rioters burn down Minneapolis.” — Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican nominee for vice president, during a rally on Wednesday in Philadelphia

This is exaggerated. Mr. Walz has faced criticism for not quickly activating the National Guard to quell civil unrest in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. But claims that he did not respond at all, or that the city burned down, are hyperbolic.

Mr. Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and demonstrators took to the streets the next day . The protests intensified, with some vandalizing vehicles and setting fires. More than 700 state troopers and officers with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ mobile response team were deployed on May 26 to help the city’s police officers, according to a 2022 independent assessment by the state’s Department of Public Safety of the response to the unrest.

But the report noted that issues with communication delayed the deployment of the state National Guard.

The mayor, Jacob Frey, asked Mr. Walz to activate the National Guard the night of May 27. An aide to Mr. Frey texted a colleague around 8 p.m. that Mr. Walz was “hesitating,” documents obtained by the local news media show . The Trump campaign cited these records as evidence of Mr. Walz’s refusal to act.

Mr. Walz has argued that he did not believe Mr. Frey “knew what he was asking for,” and that the mayor did not specify the number of troops, their mission or their abilities.

The city’s police department submitted a written request the night of May 27 for 600 guardsmen. State officials said that the request was not specific enough and that they were waiting for more detail before approving the request, but that city officials were not aware that more detail was needed, according to the 2022 report.

Mr. Frey sent a formal request for troops the morning of May 28, and Mr. Walz activated the National Guard shortly afterward — two days after protests had begun. The Guard tweeted at about 4 p.m. local time that it was ready to respond to the governor’s request.

By that time, one of the city’s police precincts had already been damaged by fire. The Trump campaign also noted that a police officer testified in 2020 that she had heard “thirdhand” that Mr. Walz had said to “give up the precinct”; at the time, a spokesman for Mr. Walz disputed that characterization.

It is also worth noting that Mr. Trump, in a June 2020 phone call with governors, praised Mr. Walz’s response: “Tim Walz. Again, I was very happy with the last couple of days, Tim. You called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast.”

“I know him a little bit. I helped him during the riots because his house was surrounded by people that were waving an American flag — doesn’t sound like very bad people. He called me and he was very concerned, very, very concerned that it was going to get out of control. They only had one guard, I guess, it was at the mansion or his house in some form. And he called me. And I said what do you want me to do about it? I was in the White House. He said if you would put out the word that I’m a good person. And I did. I put out the word.” — Mr. Trump in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday

This is misleading. Mr. Trump’s version of events is wrong on several details, and Mr. Walz’s own account noticeably differs.

On April 17, 2020 — more than a month before George Floyd’s murder — hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front of Mr. Walz’s residence to protest a stay-at-home order the governor had imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

That morning, Mr. Trump had written on social media, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!,” along with calls to “liberate” other states under lockdown orders.

That day, Mr. Walz said he had tried unsuccessfully to call Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to ask “what they think we could have done differently” to respond to the spread of the virus.

Three days later, on April 20, Mr. Trump wrote that he had received a “very nice call” from Mr. Walz and that “good things are happening.”

In a news conference that day, Mr. Walz said that he had a “very good and long conversation” with Mr. Trump on April 18 — after the protesters had left — about the need for more personal protective equipment and testing abilities.

In an interview with Politico in September 2021 published this week, Mr. Walz said that Mr. Trump’s tweet had “brought armed people to my house” and that Mr. Trump had never responded when he asked what “liberate Minnesota” meant.

“Tim Walz went on TV to talk about trying to help illegal aliens climb over the border wall. Tim Walz championed government-issued IDs, driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, which results in countless motorists being killed each and every year. Tim Walz championed free health care for illegal aliens, which will bankrupt America.” — Stephen Miller, a former Trump administration official, in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday

This is exaggerated. Mr. Miller distorted comments Mr. Walz made regarding a border wall. He is correct that Mr. Walz signed legislation allowing unauthorized immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and giving them publicly subsidized health care coverage through a state program for low-income individuals. But while Mr. Walz championed eligibility expansion, it is unclear whether he supported the health care expansion.

In 2023, Mr. Walz signed legislation expanding driver’s license eligibility to all residents of the state, regardless of immigration status. In a news release , he said he was a “longtime supporter of the bill” and expressed pride at the measure, saying it would make roads safer.

That May, Mr. Walz also signed a budget deal into law that, among other provisions, allowed unauthorized immigrants to enroll in MinnesotaCare , the state’s program for low-income residents. Mr. Walz’s budget had proposed expanding eligibility only to undocumented immigrants under 19, and a local publication reported that he opposed allowing undocumented adults to also have access to the program. His news release at the time did not mention the expansion. Additionally, MinnesotaCare provides subsidized, but not always free insurance. The health care program is funded in part by the state, and the expansion, backed by state money , would not dip into federal coffers and “bankrupt” the country.

Mr. Miller’s comment about Mr. Walz helping immigrants “climb over the border wall” distorts Mr. Walz’s remarks. In an interview last week on CNN , Mr. Walz said that the “United States needs to control its border” but argued that Mr. Trump was “not interested in solving the problem.”

“I always say, let me know how high it is,” he said, wryly expressing the ineffectiveness of a border wall. “If it’s 25 feet, then I’ll invest in the 30-foot ladder factory. That’s not how you stop this.”

He continued, “You stop this using electronics, you stop it using more border control agents, and you stop it by having a legal system that allows for that tradition of allowing folks to come here, just like my relatives did to come here, be able to work and establish the American dream. He’s not interested in that. He wants to demonize.”

“Don’t forget he tried to redesign the Minnesota state flag to look like the Somali national flag. You just can’t get further out there in America.” — Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, in an interview on a right-wing streaming platform on Wednesday

False. Minnesota adopted a new flag on May 11, after a monthslong redesign effort and thousands of public submissions. Mr. Walz had little to do with the design, which pays tribute to various facets of the state — not Somalia.

Prompted by criticism that the state’s old flag was offensive to Native Americans and bore too many similarities to other state flags, Minnesota legislators passed a measure in 2023 establishing a commission to redesign the state’s emblems. Mr. Walz signed that legislation into law. The commission received more than 2,000 submissions from the public through October 2023 and decided on a design in December.

The commission — not Mr. Walz — chose and modified a design by Andrew Prekker of Luverne, Minn. Mr. Prekker, who does part-time work in graphic design, said in an interview on local news that he had researched his concept and tried to create imagery that “represented everyone” in the state. Mr. Prekker told PolitiFact that his flag had nothing to do with Somalia.

The new flag has a white eight-point star (representing the North Star, which is the state’s motto, and the many cultures of the state) splashed on a dark blue background (representing the night sky and the shape of the state) on the left and a bright blue field on the right (representing the state’s 11,000 lakes and 6,000 rivers and streams), according to the commission’s final report.

The flag of Somalia features a white five-pointed star on a blue field.

An earlier version of this article misidentified a Minnesota agency that deployed a mobile response team to help quell unrest in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. It was the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, not the Department of National Resources.

An earlier version of this article misstated the damage to one of Minneapolis’s police precincts. It was damaged by fire but not burned to the ground.

How we handle corrections

Linda Qiu is a reporter who specializes in fact-checking statements made by politicians and public figures. She has been reporting and fact-checking public figures for nearly a decade. More about Linda Qiu

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