Gov. Tim Walz may not have been in China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests as he has previously claimed, according to an investigative report from the CNN team that linked Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-NC) to porn site commentary praising Nazis and slavery.
CNN's newest political bombshell suggests Walz was off by about two months about exactly when he visited China 35 years ago.
"An issue of the Alliance Times-Herald dated May 16, 1989, features a photo of Walz touring a Nebraska National Guard storeroom," CNN reported. "A separate newspaper article about Walz’s planned trip to China published by a Nebraska-based outlet in April 1989 reported that he planned to travel to China in early August of that year."
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This throws into question Walz's claim that he was in Hong Kong for a teaching position on June 4, 1989, when hundreds were killed by the Chinese government in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, CNN reported.
CNN also noted they corrected the headline of their original reporting.
"This story and headline have been updated to accurately reflect Tim Walz’s past claims of travel to Asia in 1989," the correction reads. "He claimed he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests."
The report arrived just hours before Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate in the upcoming presidential election, was slated to debate former President Donald Trump's running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), himself the subject of recent investigative reporting. That report suggested he knew there was no proof of Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and circulated the inflammatory rumor anyway.
"Republican allies of Ohio Sen. JD Vance have signaled that the GOP vice presidential nominee may use Walz’s history in China to attack his rival," CNN reported Tuesday.
Walz reportedly claimed in a June 2019 radio interview that he had been in Hong Kong the day of the massacre.
"It was very strange ‘cause, of course, all outside transmissions were, were blocked – Voice of America – and, of course, there was no, no phones or email or anything," Walz said. "So I was kind of out of touch."
A source close to Walz told CNN, “the point Gov. Walz is making when he discusses this is that some folks in the World Teach program discussed dropping out after Tiananmen Square, but he continued on with the program because he believed it was important for the Chinese people to learn about American democracy and American history.”