While former President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have been attacking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over his response to the violence that erupted after the killing of George Floyd, Trump told the governor at the time that he fully agreed with Walz’s behavior.
“What they did in Minneapolis was unbelievable. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately,” Trump told Walz and other governors and officials in a phone call on June 1, 2020. The Associated Press obtained an audio recording of the call on Wednesday, which has taken on new significance now that Walz has been picked as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate against Trump and Vance.
Other administration officials on the call included Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Attorney General William Barr.
ABC News reported on the call on Wednesday, a day before Harris announced Walz as her vice presidential running mate. CNN posted a transcript of the call in 2020.
Protests erupted in Minneapolis and around the world after Floyd was killed by white former police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, who kneeled on the black man’s neck for nearly nine and a half minutes. A bystander’s video recorded Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.”
His death highlighted police brutality and racism. Some protests turned violent.
Walz mobilized the Minnesota National Guard three days later to help restore order in Minneapolis after riots that included the burning of a police station and several businesses. Trump offered federal help to Walz later that day, but the governor did not consider it.
During a fundraiser in St. Paul in May 2024, Trump once again repeated the claim he has been making recently that he was responsible for the deployment of the National Guard. “The whole city was burning. If I wasn’t president, you wouldn’t have Minneapolis today,” Trump told the Republican audience. Trump made similar claims at a rally in St. Cloud last month.
In fact, Walz had ordered the mobilization at the request of the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. However, Walz was criticized at the time for not acting quickly enough. Fingers were pointed between Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Walz over who was responsible for the delay.
Trump described Walz as “a fine man” in a June 1, 2020, call and later said: “I don’t blame you. I blame the mayor.” The president did not criticize the governor at the time.
“Tim, you called a huge number of people, and the huge numbers knocked them out so fast, it was like bowling pins,” Trump said.
But Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Levitt took a different view of the call in a statement to the AP on Wednesday.
“Despite President Trump’s offer to deploy troops and the pleas for help from the liberal mayor of Minneapolis, Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days,” Levitt said.
“In this daily briefing phone call with governors on June 1, days after the riots began, President Trump praised Governor Walz for ultimately deploying the National Guard to end the violence in the city.”
Walz thanked Trump on the call, as well as Esper and Milley, “for your strategic guidance, which has been very helpful. Yes, our city is in mourning and pain.”
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