As recently as February, Mr. Walz said on a podcast that he had been in Hong Kong, then a British colony, “on June 4 when Tiananmen happened,” and decided to cross into mainland China to take up his teaching duties even though many people were urging him not to.
But it was not true. Mr. Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, indeed taught at a high school in China as part of a program sending American teachers abroad, but he did not actually travel to the country until August 1989.
Why bother making something like this up?
It was 35 years ago, not hard to believe that he just slightly misremembers it. People could still have been warning him not to go in August.
Came here to say exactly this. He just misremembered the exact date after several decades. Likely he couldn’t have traveled much sooner anyways. August was still dangerous, so he was being honest about the risk taking and such.