Tim Walz was left red-faced during last night’s debate after being challenged over a lie about being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
“I got there that summer and was wrong about this,” the Democratic vice presidential hopeful said before leaving in confusion.
For years, he had claimed he was there when the Chinese government violently suppressed the pro-democracy movement in June 1989.
But reports indicated that while he was actually in Hong Kong that year, he did not arrive there until August at the earliest.
It’s just the latest in a series of ‘mispeaks’ from Walz and psychologists tell DailyMail.com that there now appears to be a pattern.
Walz is pictured above trying to dodge a question about why he lied about his presence in Tiananmen Square during the pro-democracy protests
Dr. Christian Hart, a psychologist at Texas Woman’s University who has previously written about why politicians lie, offered two theories for Walz’s embellishments.
He said: ‘When we look at lying, we see that people only lie when they think they can get something useful out of it.
‘If no potential benefit is perceived, research shows people are almost exclusively honest.
“For Walz, he may think he’s getting some kind of favor out of it, whether that’s by burnishing his reputation or by appearing as someone who has more expertise on a subject than he actually has.”
The governor of Minnesota has repeatedly suggested that he used IVF to conceive his two children, most recently making the claim at his first joint meeting with Kamala Harris in August and in fundraising letters posted in April, which began: “My wife and I used IVF to start a family.’
But when he pressed the claims, it emerged that he had actually used intrauterine insemination, or IUI, a different treatment.
IVF is targeted by anti-abortion activists because it involves the creation and possibly destruction of embryos. IUI – in which a woman is artificially inseminated and no embryos are created – did not involve such an action.
In another instance, Walz said in 2018, while running for Congress, that he had used “weapons of war, which I carried in the war.”
But this was untrue, as the claims had upset many veterans after it emerged that Walz, who had served in the National Guard for 26 years, had never been deployed in combat or overseas – and withdrew from his battalion shortly before they were sent to fight inland. Iraq.
Another theory is that Walz, who comes from a small town in Nebraska and has been catapulted onto the national stage, is insecure — and so lied to appear more like what he considers a vice presidential candidate.
Many viewers concluded after last night’s debate that Republican vice-presidential rival JD Vance had performed more strongly
Dr. Hart added: ‘One thing we also see is that people with low self-esteem lie significantly more than people who are more secure.
“It could be that he may not consider himself quite at the level you would expect from a presidential candidate, and so he’s making exaggerated claims to look more like him.”
During his 2006 campaign for Congress, his team claimed that his DUI arrest was not the result of alcohol consumption, but that he had instead failed the alcohol test due to a misunderstanding related to hearing loss from his time at the National Guard.
However, court records show he was stopped for driving at 96mph in a 55mph zone and then taken to a local hospital, where a test showed his blood alcohol level was 0.128 – above the legal limit. limit of 0.1.
Also in the 2006 campaign, he claimed that he had received an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce in 1993 for his work in the business community.
A blistering House letter, revealed in August and sent to the Walz campaign at the time, refuted this, saying he had never received an award.
Ryan Waite, vice president of public affairs at marketing firm Think Big, told DailyMail.com that a “worrying” pattern appeared to be emerging in Walz’s lies.
He said: ‘I would have put this down a bit to inexperience, but there’s also a pattern now that’s starting to deepen a bit, I think.’
However, he said Walz did not appear to lie any more than other politicians, although he added that politicians normally learn not to make these types of claims during the primary process. But with Walz, he added, there were no primaries.
“Normally, these types of issues would be resolved during the primary process before they reached the national stage,” he said.
“But with Walz, he’s been catapulted forward without the normal ramp.”
During the debate, Walz criticized for appearing nervous and making unusual facial expressions.
Body language experts also noted how Walz’s eyes seemed to open “wide as saucers” at some points.
Joe Navarro, a published author and body language expert, shared Politics it was a ‘dynamic and emphatic facial movement that captured the viewer’s attention’.
‘Early humans would have made such facial gestures to convey strong emotions, such as ‘danger is near’.
“For Walz, it added weight to his feelings and kept our focus.”
On the debate stage, Walz mainly faced criticism for the suggestions he had made during the democracy protests on Tianamen Square.
He glossed over his response, calling himself a “knucklehead” and then adding that he gets “caught up” in the moment.
