Walz says he 'misspoke' in personal story about Tiananmen Square

US Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz has admitted during a live television debate that he "misspoke" when he claimed he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Kamala Harris' running mate was asked by a debate moderator why he had repeatedly said over the years he was in Hong Kong as China’s communist rulers crushed pro-democracy protests, when he was in fact back in his home state of Nebraska.

Walz, who is governor of Minnesota, said: “I’ve not been perfect and I’m a knucklehead at times.”

It was not the first time Walz has fallen afoul of fact-checkers this campaign cycle.

His opponent on the debate stage, Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, has also courted controversy with unfounded claims in this campaign, most notably about Haitian immigrants eating pets.

In Tuesday night's CBS debate in New York City, the moderator asked Walz to explain why he had claimed he was in Hong Kong when Chinese forces killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of anti-government protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on 4 June 1989, shocking the world.

• Tiananmen Square: What happened in the protests of 1989?

Walz touted his work as a teacher, congressman and governor, before saying he sometimes gets "caught up in the rhetoric".

When pressed by the moderator about the timing discrepancy, Walz replied: "All I said on this was, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just - that's what I've said."

He has previously said he was in Hong Kong a month before Tiananmen Square, then forged ahead with a yearlong teaching stint in the country in mainland China after the massacre.

But news reports from the time show Walz was in Nebraska until that August, when he left for China.

Republicans have branded him "Tiananmen Tim".

Walz has also recently revised the amount of times he has been to China. In a 2016 interview he said he had visited the country "about 30 times".

But the Harris-Walz campaign told US media this week the number of trips Walz took to China is "likely closer to 15".

• Walz history with China is more hawkish than critics claim

This is not the first time that the Harris-Walz campaign has acknowledged the running mate "misspoke".

Aides for the Democratic ticket issued a clarification in August as it emerged Walz had talked in 2018 about "weapons of war that I carried in war" as a member of the National Guard. But Walz never served in combat.

This summer he said he and his wife started their family thorough IVF - a fertility treatment that became politically charged this election cycle.

His wife later clarified they used a different treatment, intrauterine insemination.