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The Trump campaign wasn't the only one to have a mini-scandal on its hands yesterday. Reporters and political operatives are currently looking everywhere for dirt on Tim Walz, and they think they've found some.
It is not a secret that Walz was busted for DWI back in the mid-1990s. And at the start of his first gubernatorial campaign, back in 2018, he gave what appears to be a fairly accurate accounting of that incident. That is to say, he was driving drunk (0.128 BAC at a time when 0.1 was the legal limit) and he was also traveling well above the speed limit (96 mph in a 55 zone). He was followed by police, and did not instantly pull over. Eventually, because he admitted guilt and because he agreed to enter a treatment program, the charges against him were significantly reduced, and he's never touched another drop of alcohol.
The new dirt, ostensibly unearthed by CNN, but prompted by tips from right-wing sources, is that the story Walz told in 2006, when he first entered politics, was rather different. Reportedly, he claimed back then that he was not drunk, that his failure to pull over was a misunderstanding (he claimed he thought he was being chased by a criminal), and that his failure of a roadside sobriety test came because he could not hear the officer and did not understand what he was supposed to do.
This is not a great look for Walz, obviously. That said, CNN's reporting is based on a few very old, largely defunct sources. That means it's hard to tell if the false narrative came from Walz, or if it came from an inventive campaign operative. It's also hard to tell if that story was carried through the 2006 campaign, or if a more honest version was eventually promulgated. What is clear, as we note, is that Walz eventually owned up to the true and complete version of events. We can think of some dishonest politicians who would never, ever do that, no matter how much evidence of their lies they are confronted with.
We pass this story along for a couple of reasons. First, because we know readers like to be well-informed about the facts behind a story like this, particularly if it becomes a new front in the right-wing war on Walz. Second, because there are some pretty strong indications that right-wingers are experimenting with a "the entire ticket is made up of drunkards" narrative. Back in 2019, Harris appeared at a race called the Des Moines Turkey Trot. At one point, she bent over to speak to a child and offer a cookie. Someone took a screen capture of video Harris posted to her eX-Twitter account, picking just the right moment to create a false impression:
This became the basis for spurious claims that Harris was soused, and that she spent her time at the race throwing up on everyone.
The "Harris is an alcoholic" claims are back. Thus far, it's limited to the fringes of the alt-right, but it doesn't take much for a claim to move from "fringes of the alt-right" to "Donald Trump's mouth," particularly if he sees just the right tweets or truths. Maybe nothing will come of this, but it's useful to be forewarned, just in case. (Z)