MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski was surprised by Tim Walz's response when challenged on his past claims about Tiananmen Square.
The Minnesota governor has claimed to have been in Hong Kong at the time of the 1989 massacre, when in fact he was there weeks later, and "Morning Joe" panelists agreed that Walz seemed unprepared to explain the inconsistencies in that account and came off as flat at other points during the debate.
"I was disappointed," said panelist Elise Jordan. "I felt like the reasons that Kamala Harris chose Gov. Walz didn't really come out last night, the Gov. Walz who was joking and who was free-flowing in interviews, who was kind of, you know, that guy in your hometown who is a local leader and he is a lot of fun but he can be serious. I just saw someone trying to be who he wasn't and it allowed J.D. Vance to just skate through. It was disappointing, too, Gov. Walz didn't have a better answer why he has said previously that he was in Tiananmen Square when he wasn't. He could have easily said, 'I misspoke, I'm sorry.' But instead he almost made it worse."
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Co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed and offered a suggestion for what he should have told the moderators.
"I was surprised by that moment," she said. "I was surprised by a number of moments like that, but we'll take that one as the example. By the way, I don't think it matters how late the great moment was [where Vance refused to say who won the 2020 election] because, unfortunately, we TV people, we're not that important any more. People take nuggets online, on social media – it's the truth. I mean, it's going to be all about the clips, about what's put out here and there."
"I will say, though, to that Tiananmen Square answer," Brzezinski said, "I was waiting for [him to say], 'What are you talking about? I misspoke and I'm sorry about that. This guy lies every day about legal migrants, he dehumanizes legal migrants. The governor of Ohio is begging for J.D. Vance and Donald Trump to stop doing this to our community and they continue. He lies about Jan.6, he's lying about the 2020 election! I misspoke 23 years ago, you can talk about what he said six hours ago. These guys lie for a living.'"
"That would have been my answer," she added.
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