Tim Walz claims that he was first inspired to seek public office after being denied entry to a rally for former president George W. Bush in 2004. But contemporaneous accounts of the story cast doubt on Walz’s version of the story.
Walz claimed in an August 2020 thread on X, formerly Twitter, that he decided to run for office after he and his students “were denied entry because the students had previously volunteered for the democratic party.”
“The last sitting President to visit my hometown of Mankato, Minnesota was George W. Bush in 2004. As a high school teacher and football coach, I brought two fellow teachers’ children to the speech as an educational experience,” Walz wrote. “It was at this moment that I decided to run for office,” Walz states in his story.
But testimonies from multiple people present at the rally suggest that the Democrat’s origin story could be missing valuable context, the Washington Examiner reported Friday.
Chris Faulkner, who says he was the state director for the Republican National Committee’s ground game in Minnesota, claims that Walz had been protesting Bush the day prior. Faulkner says that he was the one who denied Walz entry to the event.
“You were out here yesterday with a sign protesting President Bush’s visit,” Faulkner recalls telling Walz.
“He knew we would ask him to leave. He literally was standing outside our HQ the day before protesting. He brought those students as ‘cover,” Faulkner says. He also says that Walz came back with a local television crew to put on an “impromptu press conference” after being denied entry.
Replying to Faulkner on X, a man named Matt Klaber said that he and two other students were denied tickets, and arranged for a local TV crew to come to the event. According to Klaber, when they were eventually granted tickets, “our families decided to send us with Tim.” According to the Washington Examiner, Klaber was at the time an active member of a local College Democrats chapter, and never took a class with Walz.
Klaber recounted the story in an interview with BBC News, but did not mention the fact that he and his friends arranged for a camera crew to come to the event. BBC reports that the students were not denied because they had “previously volunteered for the democratic party,” as Walz claims, but because “staffers observed a faded John Kerry sticker on [Klaber’s] wallet.”
Hey, you’ve got your facts wrong. Me and two other students are who you denied tickets to, and who recruited the local TV station. We then subsequently were granted tickets and our families decided to send us with Tim. (Respect for making us wait 3hrs, tho.)
— Matt Klaber (@maphu) August 6, 2024
A photograph posted on X by Michael Brodkorb, who says he worked for the Minnesota Republican Party, shows Walz and three others demonstrating, allegedly outside of the Bush rally. Faulkner confirmed in a comment to The Daily Wire that the protest was out front of a ticket pickup location the day before the rally, which allowed them to identify Walz and bar him from entering the event the following day.
In ‘04, I worked for the MNGOP. President Bush visited Mankota on August 4, 2004, and I took pictures of protesters outside the event. Tim Walz (pictured on the far-right) protested Bush’s visit to Minnesota. The thread below from Walz about his role at Bush’s event is dishonest. https://t.co/rEpzoF0yE9 pic.twitter.com/ygLiIEG4p1
— Michael Brodkorb (@mbrodkorb) August 17, 2020
Walz is seen holding a sign that says “Enduring Freedom Veterans for Kerry.” Three other demonstrators can be seen in the image as well, each of whom are holding a protest sign, with one wearing a “College Democrats” shirt.
Walz has come under fire since joining Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign for misconstruing his military service. Walz, who was in the National Guard, has said that he carried “weapons in war,” though he never deployed to an active war zone.
Neither the Harris campaign nor Klaber responded to requests for comment.
