Fact Check: Did Tim Walz Once Gift His Family's Car to a Next-Door Neighbor?

Claim:

In the early 2000s, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, bought a new car and gifted their former vehicle to a single mother living in their neighborhood.

Rating:

Unproven ( About this rating? )

An online rumor tells the story of a time when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, purchased a new car and then gifted their old vehicle to a next-door neighbor in need.

This rumor circulated online with just weeks to go until the November 2024 U.S. elections. Walz was campaigning alongside Vice President Kamala Harris as her running mate on the Democratic Party's presidential ticket.

For example, on Aug. 28, a Facebook page supporting Harris and Walz named Ridin' With Kamala posted ( archived ) a quote meme telling the story. By the next day, the post had received over 39,000 reactions, 1,300 comments and 11,000 shares.

Other prominent social media accounts and websites that shared the same meme included the progressive Facebook page The Other 98% ( archived ), X user @EastEndJoe ( archived ) and AmericasBestPics.com .

Users appeared to primarily share this rumor in the form of the quote meme, which credited a man named David Fink as its author. Fink's original Aug. 25 Facebook post ( archived ) and automatically crossposted Threads post ( archived ) read as follows:

Tim Walz story from a cousin who knows him personally.

Tim and Gwen have always only had one car. In the early 2000s their next-door neighbor, who is a single mom, had her car break down. Tim and Gwen decided to get a new car and then gave their car to the next-door neighbor. Tim was teaching at the time and picked up an extra coaching job in order to do it. Tim has never told the story, but his neighbor has.

I love first-hand stories like this one. I admire this kind of altruism.

By phone, Fink described to Snopes in detail how he obtained the story about the Walz family and the car, as well as what such stories mean to him. However, he declined to provide us with contact information for the cousin or neighbor, or any further details or evidence that might help confirm the rumor.

In such situations where evidence is lacking and a claim cannot yet be definitively declared as true or false, we select a fact-check rating of "Unproven."

We contacted a Walz campaign official to ask about this rumor but did not receive a response before publication time.

How Fink Heard About the Walz-Car Story

During Snopes' phone conversation with Fink, he told us, "I have a cousin who is very active politically and he lived in Minnesota for a very long time. And so, I sent him an email and said, 'Hey, do you have any stories about Tim Walz? Personal stories. I'm curious.' And, he sent me an email with a few stories. And I just picked the one I liked the most and I posted it." He also said, "My accounts are [public], but it went somehow or the other, through I guess reposting, people made a thing out of it, so now it's a thing I guess. I don't know. It was just meant for my friends. It wasn't meant for the world."

Fink continued, "I'll tell you, I like personal stories from people I know that have met candidates. To me, the personal stories carry more... they resonate more with me than mainstream media. More I think if it comes from a publicist or if there's a spin on it or whatever it is, a direct source who knows the person, to me, is more reliable or meaningful, personally, than a stranger. I have a friend from college who worked for the State Department for his whole career. He told me Hillary Clinton was the best boss he ever worked for. That meant a lot to me. That was, to me, just valuable information. So, when I have the opportunity to have that direct information particularly from someone I know and trust, to me that's important. All politics are grassroots, supposedly, and what's more grassroots than somebody from Minnesota who knows him?"

"Do I think a nice person makes somebody a good candidate? Not necessarily," he said. "Does it make him a good person? Probably. Do I care? Yeah, I kind of do. I kind of care about values and morals and ethics. And that story, to me, was a very short way of kind of defining a person's values. A couple's values. And, to me, that kind of tugged at my heartstrings a little bit. I thought, 'I need to share this.' This is interesting to me. Maybe my friends will find it interesting, too."

A Lack of Corroborating Evidence

In a later phone call, after asking Fink if he could connect us with the cousin and neighbor mentioned in the story to possibly provide evidence to confirm the rumor, he said, "I talked to my cousin's wife, who is also my cousin but not the one who sent me the story. She said that [the cousin] combined two stories. Yes, they gave the car to the next-door neighbor who was a single mom with four teenage kids. But the extra coaching job was not specifically for the new car. So, the car story is true. Just the additional coaching to pay for that car specifically, is not totally accurate."

The neighbor was apparently unwilling to speak with Snopes or provide evidence. "You know, I asked if the neighbor would want to talk and she said, basically, they don't want to spend the time on this," Fink said. "It's just, they told me something, I posted it and I don't really think they have really any interest in spending any more time on it."

We will update this story in the future should we obtain any evidence that might help to confirm or debunk the rumor.

Sources:

Fink, David. "Tim Walz Story from a Cousin Who Knows Him Personally." Facebook , 25 Aug. 2024, https://www.facebook.com/DavidSamuelFink/.