Unearthed 2020 Audio Shows Trump Praising Tim Walz For Handling Of George Floyd Protests

Unearthed audio shows former President Donald Trump praising Tim Walz’s handling of the protests following the death of George Floyd.

Hours after Vice President Kamala Harris announced the Minnesota governor as her running mate, Trump’s allies rushed to denounce Walz for his handling of the riots and political violence in his state in May 2020.

“He allowed rioters to burn down the streets of Minneapolis,” Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), the Republican candidate for vice president, said on Tuesday. However, audio from a phone call between Trump and a group of governors tells a different story.

“I know Gov. Walz is on the phone, and we spoke, and I fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days,” Trump told a group of governors on June 1, 2020, according to a recording obtained by ABC News. He added that Walz was an “excellent guy.”

“I was very happy with the last couple of days, Tim,” Trump added. “You called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast it was like bowling pins.”

Trump claimed on the call that Walz listened to his advice to use the National Guard adding, “I said, you got to use the National Guard in big numbers.” A spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign told ABC News that Trump’s remarks at the time were untrue.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, responded to the audio by claiming, “Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days, despite President Trump’s offer to deploy soldiers and cries for help from the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis… In this daily briefing phone call with Governors on June 1, days after the riots began, President Trump acknowledged Governor Walz for FINALLY taking action to deploy the National Guard to end the violence in the city.”

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