Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) defended his past misstatements on the campaign trail during an interview on Fox News Sunday, attributing some of his inaccurate statements to the passion he feels for key policy issues. This marked Walz’s first Sunday show appearance since being chosen by Vice President Kamala Harris as her running mate, following a period of avoiding national media.
“Look, I speak passionately. I had an entire career decades before I was in public office,” Walz said. “I’m very proud of my 24 years in service and my record. I have never disparaged someone else in this, but I know that’s not what Donald Trump does.”
Walz was questioned about inaccuracies regarding his personal experience with intrauterine insemination versus in vitro fertilization, a 1995 DUI arrest, his military record, and his false claim of attending the pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests in the late 1980s.
As governor, Walz signed a bill that extended abortion access beyond Roe v. Wade, removing restrictions on abortion throughout the entire pregnancy. The revised law also removed language that previously mandated doctors to “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant” and specified the treatment they should receive. Instead, the revision requires that a doctor “care for the infant who is born alive.”
This change has led anti-abortion advocates to argue that doctors are no longer legally required to save the life of a baby that survives an abortion in Minnesota. However, abortion rights advocates counter that the federal ban on partial-birth abortions already makes such practices illegal.
Walz maintained that Minnesota’s laws are consistent with abortion protections across the U.S. “Minnesota law aligns with every other case of what physicians are required by their ethical responsibilities,” he said. “It changed nothing other than aligning with all care that physicians provide in any circumstance for any medical case. So it’s alignment as it’s always been. The outcomes we get in our healthcare results are the best in the nation. And all it did was align with existing law.”
