Trump goes after Tim Walz’s response to COVID-19 demonstrations with evidence-free claim

Donald Trump welcomed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to the presidential race by attempting to portray him as weak and ineffective, as he floated an unverified version of a phone call between him and Walz during the early days of COVID-driven political unrest in the state.

Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, Trump gave his account of a phone call with Walz in April 2020 as demonstrators protested outside the governor’s home. Weeks earlier, Walz had enacted a stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

On April 17, 2020, hundreds of people protested outside the governor’s residence in St. Paul to oppose the stay-at-home mandate. The protest coincided with Trump tweeting in support of protests across the U.S., writing in all caps, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA.”

Trump on Wednesday characterized the protesters simply as people who were “waving an American flag,” but Walz has said some were carrying guns.

In the Fox interview, Trump said he helped disperse the demonstration, and characterized the phone call as Walz requesting help to quell the protest.

“He called me and he was very concerned, very, very concerned that it was going to get out of control,” Trump said on Wednesday. “They only had one guard, I guess it was at the mansion or at his house in some form. And he called me and I said, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ I was in the White House.”

Trump continued, without offering evidence: “He said, ‘If 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.”

Several days after the protest, Walz said he made a call to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on the same day of the demonstration. That call was returned the following night and lasted 10 minutes, Walz said. Walz and Trump gave a cordial recap of the phone call at the time, with the governor saying he felt that the state and federal government’s response to COVID was aligned.

Trump also gave a positive recap of the interaction with Walz, saying it was “a very nice call.”

But in a September 2021 interview with Politico journalists that has now been released in full, Walz was more critical of Trump.

Trump’s “Liberate” tweet “brought armed people to my house,” Walz said in the interview for the book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.”

“It certainly ratcheted up the social media side of things and put the security folks a little more on high alert, but not all that much,” Walz said in the interview.

Asked again about the tweet’s impacts, Walz noted that members of the far-right Proud Boys group also showed up at his house. Walz said that he generally had positive interactions with Trump but that he never heard from the president what he meant by “liberate” the state.

A spokesperson for Walz did not respond to inquiries about Trump’s account of the phone call.