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“I’m an idiot sometimes.”

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“I’m an idiot sometimes.”

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WASHINGTON – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he “misspoke” when he invoked longstanding claims that he was in Hong Kong in the spring of 1989 when the Tiananmen Square massacre killed hundreds of people came.

Recently discovered news reports from Nebraska showed that the Democratic vice presidential candidate was actually in the United States at the time and traveled to China in the summer after the massacre.

When Walz was asked by CBS News to explain this discrepancy during Tuesday night's vice presidential debate, he struggled to provide a succinct answer.

“I tried to do my best,” he said. “I wasn’t perfect and sometimes I’m a dick.”

He said he learned a lot from his time in China and this has shown in his career in public service.

“Often I talk a lot and get lost in the rhetoric,” he said. “Being there, what impact it had, what difference it made in my life, I learned a lot about China.”

“I got there that summer and made a mistake,” he concluded.

Walz cited the anecdote during a congressional hearing in 2014, saying he was in Hong Kong in May 1989. “And as events unfolded, several of us went inside. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong,” he told the Time hearing. It wasn't until February that he repeated the claim in a podcast.

But local news reports resurfaced by the conservative Washington Free Beacon news outlet suggest he was still in Nebraska at the time.

The Alliance (Neb.) Times-Herald showed a photo of Walz touring a Nebraska National Guard storage facility on May 16, 1989. The caption states that Walz will “take over the task” of staffing the storage room from a retired Guardsman moving to Alliance, Nebraska, CNN reported.

Another newspaper article published in April 1989 by a Nebraska-based newspaper said that Walz planned to travel to China in early August, a month after the protests ended. Minnesota Public Radio News and APM Reports first reported the possible contradiction.

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Walz may also have been deceptive about how often he traveled to China. During an interview in 2016, the governor said he had visited the country “about 30 times.” Additionally, he told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in 2016 that he had traveled to Hong Kong “dozens and dozens of times.”

Republicans criticized Walz's ties to China. House Oversight Chairman James Comer on Monday subpoenaed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for documents that indicate the governor may have ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

“Throughout his career, Governor Walz has defied the (Chinese Communist Party), fought for human rights and democracy, and always put American jobs and manufacturing first,” the Harris campaign said in a statement to Minnesota Public Radio .

“Republicans are distorting basic facts and desperately lying to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda: praising dictators and sending American jobs to China.”

Jonathan Limehouse contributed.

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