Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz has a strained relationship with the truth.
During his first run for Congress, he lied to the public about his drunk-driving arrest in 1995. And he has falsely said he retired as a command sergeant major from the Minnesota National Guard.
Now, he’s been called out for another falsehood, and it isn’t a small one. Obsessed with “reproductive rights” — Democrat code for abortion — Walz has repeatedly said he and wife Gwen conceived their two kids through in-vitro fertilization.
That is false, and GOP opponent J.D. Vance isn’t the only one who noticed. Even hate-Trump CNN’s Jake Tapper called him out, only to leave Democratic Convention panelists in a fierce struggle to explain away either Walz’s lie, or worse, ignorance of the procedure.
The Associated Press and The New York Times also corrected Walz’s oft-told yarn.
“That’s Not Inaccurate”
In criticizing J.D. Vance on MSNBC, Walz falsely stated that IVF created his family. Tapper played Walz’s comments:
J.D. Vance knows nothing about that. And then he keeps going into all these things. Today’s IVF Day. Thank God for IVF. My wife and I have two beautiful children.
“That’s not accurate,” Tapper said, explaining that Gwen Walz released a statement explaining how the children were conceived.
“Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time — not even sharing the details with our wonderful and close family,” Gwen Walz said. “She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process. I’d rush home from school, and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track.”
IUI is intrauterine insemination, by which sperm is injected directly into the woman’s uterus.
“Governor Walz talks how normal people talk,” a campaign spokesman said. “He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.”
The CNN panelists told Tapper much the same thing.
Early yesterday, Vance wrote that Walz “lied” about the procedure over a clip of Walz’s claim that Vance would have stopped him from using the procedure.
“If it was up to JD Vance, I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF. Democrats are investing in prenatal care,” Kamala HQ wrote over video of Walz:
We’re the ones that are for universal pre-K. We’re the ones that are providing school meals. I’m not gonna back down one bit on this whole family values thing. We’re making it more affordable to have children by having paid family and medical leave. Where is JD Vance’s program?
Except again, that the Walzes didn’t use IVF.
“Tim Walz has described his family’s IVF experience. But they used a different procedure,” the Associated Press noted in a headline. The ensuing story suggests that Gwen Walz wanted to explain the matter before Republicans had a field day with another untruth from her far-left husband.
“In March, after an Alabama court halted in vitro fertilization procedures in the state, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz decided to speak about his struggle to have children with his wife, Gwen,” AP began:
The same month, his team sent a fundraising email titled “our IVF journey” sharing an article that referenced “his family’s IVF journey” in the headline.
And earlier this month, Walz criticized Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican candidate for vice president, by saying, “If it was up to him, I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF.”
In introducing himself to voters as Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ running mate, Walz has made his family’s struggle with fertility a central part of his narrative, a tangible way to connect with voters alarmed at the erosion of reproductive rights in the U.S. But Gwen Walz on Tuesday issued a statement that detailed the experience more comprehensively and disclosed that they relied on a different process known as intrauterine insemination, or IUI.
The headline over the Times story was even more to the point: “Walz Family Fertility Journey Ran Not Through I.V.F. but Another Common Treatment — Unlike in vitro fertilization, the procedure used by the Walzes does not involve freezing embryos, so it has not been targeted by anti-abortion leaders.”
The newspaper also explained that Walz fibbed when Harris introduced him as her running mate in Philadelphia. “Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business,” the Minnesota governor said. “Look, that includes I.V.F. And this gets personal for me and my family.”
So in repeatedly claiming that IVF created his kids, Walz either lied to portray Republicans as the enemies of couples who struggle to conceive, or he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In either case, the optics, as the political argot goes, aren’t all that good.
Other Falsehoods
For this is the third documented untruth from the fast friend of sex perverts and radical Islamist antisemites.
In 1995, cops in Nebraska arrested Walz for drunk driving after they clocked him at 95 mph in a 55 mph zone on the highway. His blood alcohol content was 0.128, well above the legal limit of 0.08 percent. Prosecutors dropped the drunk-driving charge and let Walz plead to reckless driving.
Yet in 2006, during his first run for Congress, his campaign manager said he wasn’t drunk when cops took him to jail.
Reported the Post-Bulletin of Rochester, Minnesota:
Walz’s campaign manager Kerry Greeley didn’t dispute that Walz was speeding when he was pulled over that night, but she said Walz was not drunk. She attributed the misunderstanding to Walz’s deafness, a condition resulting from his years of serving as an artillerist in the Army National Guard.
“He couldn’t understand what the officer was saying to him,” Greeley said.
Walz is also accused of stolen valor for claiming he went to “war.”
Kamala HQ promoted the comment on X:
I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.
In fact, Walz has never been to war, and quit the Minnesota National Guard just before his unit was deployed to Iraq so he could run for Congress.
Walz has also falsely said he retired as a command sergeant major. That is untrue. The Guard provisionally promoted to that rank, but he didn’t complete the training. He retired as a master sergeant.
