Donald Trump claimed to have saved Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, from rightwing protesters in 2020 during unrest in Minnesota after the police murder of George Floyd, a statement that appears to contradict Walz’s own descriptions of calls between the two politicians.
Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, Trump said, without offering evidence or specific dates or times, that he publicly announced Walz was “a good person” in order to dissuade protesters from surrounding Walz’s house.
Walz, the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential pick, has previously said it was tweets by Trump that “brought armed people to my house” in the first place, including members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group.
In the Wednesday interview, Trump said: “I helped him very much during the riots because his house was surrounded by people that were waving an American flag.”
Floyd was killed in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, when Derek Chauvin, a police officer, knelt on his neck. Protests against police brutality and for racial justice ensued, as did some rioting and property destruction.
Trump did not act to calm the situation, tweeting on 29 May: “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
The platform then known as Twitter (now X) said Trump’s post “violated rules about glorifying violence” but left it up.
Speaking to Fox, Trump said Walz was “very, very concerned that [the situation] was going to get out of control.
“They only had one guard, I guess it was at the [executive] mansion or at his house in some form. And he called me, I said, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ I was in the White House. He said, ‘You would put out the word that I’m a good person.’ And I did, I put out the word, I said, ‘He’s a good person. I hope everything’s good.’ And everybody put down their flags and took their flags with them. But they took the American flags and their Maga flags and they left.
“It was thousands of people. That was the first time, I said, ‘Wow, that’s very interesting.’ And he called me back and he thanked me very much. That’s my only thing I’ve ever had to do with him.”
On Wednesday, a source close to Walz told the Guardian the call to which Trump referred took place a month before Floyd’s murder, days after Trump’s “liberate Michigan” tweet.
Walz and Trump had a cordial conversation about the Covid response, the source said, citing reporting at the time and a tweet dated 20 April in which Trump said he “received a very nice call” from Walz and said: “We are working closely on getting him all he needs, and fast. Good things happening!”
Walz has discussed multiple calls with Trump in an interview with Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, reporters for Politico who wrote a bestselling book about the 2020 election and who on Wednesday published their conversation in full. In it, Walz said he spoke to Trump and his vice-president, Mike Pence, throughout the Covid spring and protest summer of 2020.
“President Trump would call me and … those conversations … were relatively cordial,” Walz said. “He made public statements, during the unrest with George Floyd, that ‘Governor Walz knows how to do this, he’d been in the military. And they’re doing some of these things.’”
But Walz also discussed incendiary tweets including a 17 April call to “Liberate Minnesota” from public health rules imposed under Covid.
“I also would tell him that it was really unhelpful and that my children were scared when they heard these things,” Walz said. “And it wasn’t that he had to agree … but I asked for clarification. I never got it. I said, ‘What does ‘Liberate Minnesota’ mean? What do you want me to do differently? What do you think that I’m doing or not doing?’”
Walz said he “never got a response” from Trump but had a “much closer” relationship with Pence, with whom he served in Congress.
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Trump’s “communication style was that I sometimes wondered if he actually heard me”, Walz said.
“There was actually one time where I said, ‘My daughter is sitting right next to me, Mr President, could she say hi?’ And what I was trying to do is for him to maybe engage on a personal basis with that. [My children] both had to get off social media because they get threats, we have people directly threatening them.
“I said that there are real-world implications. I said, ‘I know that you care deeply about your children, I care deeply about mine, anything we could do to maybe separate that stuff?’ I never got a direct answer, but I think he heard. And he, I will say this, he took the time to speak with her, he spent a little time chatting on the phone. That’s the way I approach this. I was trying to humanize this, trying to make the case that we’re all in this together.”
Walz also said tweets by Trump “brought armed people to my house”, including members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group.
“Certainly with George Floyd and other stuff, folks started taking to protesting here,” Walz said. The protest that “got way out of hand”, he added, happened on 6 January 2021, when Trump incited a mob to attack Congress in Washington, in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Then, Walz said, his son had to be evacuated from his house.
Apparently referring to events in 2020, Walz added: “Just to be very candid, the rhetoric that the president engaged in, and then was amplified by others, changed the whole dynamic especially in a state like Minnesota where I could be out by myself without folks around and it would be fine.”
Walz was set to appear at campaign rallies on Wednesday with Harris in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan. On Fox News, Trump was asked how he reacted when Harris named Walz as her running mate.
“I never thought this was gonna be the one that was picked,” Trump said, adding: “I know him a little bit.”
Calling Walz “a very, very liberal man”, he said Harris had made “a shocking pick and I could not be more thrilled”.