(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump has retracted his four-year-old false claim about his and Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz’s handling of the unrest following the Murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020.
Walz is among the many Democrats Sources say Vice President Kamala Harris is being regarded as a possible running mate. Trump, the Republican nominee, said during a campaign speech in Minnesota on Saturday: “Every voter in Minnesota needs to know that when the violent mobs of anarchists, looters and Marxists burned Minneapolis four years ago – remember me? – I couldn't get your governor to act. He should have called in the National Guard or the Army. And he didn't. I couldn't get your governor to act. So I sent the National Guard to save Minneapolis.” (Trump subsequently criticized Harris for her own response to the unrest.)
CNN has verified this Trump story in July 2020. But he repeated the story on several subsequent opportunities, including a summary during his presidential debate with President Joe Biden in June 2024.
Facts first: Trump's claims that he sent the National Guard to Minneapolis in 2020 and Walz refused to achieve this are each false. Walz, not Trump, sent the National Guard to Minneapolis — and Walz first deployed the Guard greater than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself.
The Minnesota National Guard, which Walz deployed, is under the command of the governor, not the president. The president has the facility to federalize the states’ National Guard troops under certain circumstances, but Trump never did so through the unrest in Minnesota in 2020.
After Trump began telling this false story in June 2020, Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann issued an announcement to CNN in the shape of a question-and-answer sheet that included, partially: “Did President Trump 'call in' the National Guard? No.” “Did Governor Walz call in the National Guard? Yes.” “Did Governor Walz call in the National Guard at the direction of the President? No. He activated the Minnesota National Guard at the request of the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul before speaking to the White House.”
Evidence shows Trump's claim is fake
Public evidence confirms that Walz, who served within the Army National Guard from 1981 to 2005, deployed the Guard himself in May 2020.
Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020. On May 26, 2020, protests took place in Minneapolis, including Violence. And there was Looting, violence and arsontogether with peaceful protests, on May 27, 2020.
On May 28, 2020, shortly after 4 p.m. local time, Walz issued a press release announcing that he an implementing regulation Activation of the Minnesota National Guard. At 16:13 local time that day, the Minnesota National Guard announced Adjutant General Jon Jensen said on social media: “We are ready and prepared to respond to the governor's request. We are currently in the process of assigning and preparing units to respond.”
At 10:41 p.m. local time that evening, after a police station in Minneapolis set on firethe Minnesota National Guard announced that “we have deployed more than 500 troops to St. Paul, Minneapolis and the surrounding communities.”
At 11:53 p.m. local time, Trump posted twice on social media.
In a contributionTrump threatened to send within the National Guard if Minneapolis' Democratic mayor, Jacob Frey, didn’t “get his act together and get the city under control.” other postTrump wrote: “I just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him the military is backing him every step of the way. If there is trouble, we take control, but when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
In not one of the posts did Trump claim to have been the one who sent the Guard. He began making such claims publicly in June 2020.
Regardless of what happened of their conversation or how Walz handled the crisis, it’s undeniable that Walz, not Trump, was the one who activated the National Guard. Likewise, it is feasible that Trump's public pressure led to Walz's Decision of 30 May 2020 to significantly increase the scope of the operation by mobilizing the whole Minnesota National Guard—although Walz's office denied in 2020 that Trump had anything to do with it—that reinforcement was also indisputably Walz's act, not Trump's.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery company. All rights reserved.
Originally published:
image credit : www.mercurynews.com