在周二的一场辩论中，小波·华茨被问及为何他声称自己于1989年6月在天安门广场事件爆发期间身处香港，而实际上他的确在内布拉斯加州时，他回答说：“我有时候会犯愚蠢的错误。”
“我在夏天去了那里，并且有时口误说成了这样。”在追问下，他补充道，试图解释多年来一直坚持自己是在反政府示威活动之后，进入中国内地的说法。
小波·华茨试图将这次失误视为不重要，称自己偶尔会被激情所影响。然后，他转而强调自己的教师、国会议员及州长的经历，以此证明其社区对其过失的信任并未动摇。
长久以来，小波·华茨声称自己于1989年6月4日即天安门广场事件当天在港。据称是为了继续在该国为期一年的教学任务而不久后进入中国内地——他将此描述为勇敢的行为。“我当时的思维是，这是展示一切的绝佳机会，”他在播客“Pod Save America”的节目中于二月份说到，“而且我能获得很多自由来这样去做。我在教授美国历史并分享故事。”
然而事实并非如此。根据当时的新闻报道显示，直到8月他才到达香港。周一，明尼苏达公共广播电台首先质疑了华茨的行程时间线。他的竞选团队并未就此提供解释。
即使承认了这次错误，在辩论中他再次将时间描述得含糊不清：“我在香港和中国参与民主示威期间进入那里，并从中学习了很多关于治理需要的内容。”
共和党人迅速抓住了这一事件，将其作为一系列夸大其词或误导性陈述的证据，这些陈述在提名副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯时已出现。这些包括他在2018年声称“我在战场携带武器”，实际上他从未参战过的一次误导性陈述。他还暗示自己和妻子使用了体外受精（IVF）来组建家庭，事实上他们使用的是体内人工授精（IUI）的方法。
小波·华茨的声明再次凸显了一个问题——他的言行与事实之间的差异在政治竞选中是一个持久的焦点。
新闻来源：www.nytimes.com
原文地址：Walz Says He ‘Misspoke’ About Being in Hong Kong During Tiananmen Square Protests
新闻日期：2024-10-02
原文摘要：
Asked by a debate moderator on Tuesday why Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota had said that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in June of 1989, when he had in reality been in his home state of Nebraska, Mr. Walz said he was “a knucklehead at times.” “All I said on this was, I got there that summer, and misspoke on this,” Mr. Walz added, when pressed to explain why he has maintained, for years, that he was in Hong Kong during the anti-government demonstration and entered China shortly afterward. Mr. Walz tried to dismiss the misstatement as insignificant, saying he sometimes gets “caught up in the rhetoric.” He then pivoted to assert that his work as a teacher, congressman and governor was evidence that his community trusted his record despite his missteps. Mr. Walz has long said that he was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, the day that Chinese soldiers killed hundreds of protesters in Tiananmen Square. He has said that he entered mainland China shortly after, even as others chose not to travel there, because he wanted to forge ahead with his yearlong teaching stint in the country — framing it as a courageous act. “My thinking at the time was, what a golden opportunity to go tell, you know, how it was,” Mr. Walz told the podcast “Pod Save America” in February. “And I did have a lot of freedom to do that. Taught American history and could tell the story.” But Mr. Walz was not yet in Hong Kong. He was in Nebraska until that August, according to news reports from the time. The timeline of his trip was first questioned by Minnesota Public Radio on Monday. His campaign did not provide an explanation. Even as he acknowledged the misstatements at Tuesday’s debate, Mr. Walz again appeared to muddle the timeline: “I was in Hong Kong and China, during the democracy protests, went in. And from that I learned a lot about what needed to be in governance.” There were rallies in Hong Kong to support the pro-democracy protesters in China, even after the military crackdown. But Mr. Walz appears to have arrived after the large protests in the People’s Republic that people commonly think of as the pro-democracy protests. Republicans have pounced on the issue, pointing to it as another of a series of exaggerations and misstatements Mr. Walz has made, both large and small, that have surfaced since he was named Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. Those include a comment he made in 2018 about “weapons of war that I carried in war” as a member of the National Guard, when he never served in combat. He has also implied that he and his wife used in vitro fertilization to start their family. In fact, the couple used a different treatment, intrauterine insemination.
