After Vice President Kamala Harris announced Tuesday that she would nominate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in the 2024 presidential election, false claims about Midwestern Democrats proliferated, some of which appeared on social media before Harris even revealed her pick.
Let’s look at the facts.
___
CLAIM: Walz told CNN he wants to invest in “ladder factories” that would help people climb the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and enter the country illegally.
Fact: False. The post misrepresents comments Walz made on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” episode last week. In the entire segment, the Democrat jokes about hypothetical investments and criticizes former President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the southern border. He then gives several other examples of how to address illegal immigration into the U.S. through Mexico.
In a statement Harris made Tuesday, social media users used clips from the video to make it appear the Minnesota governor was advocating for illegal immigration.
“He talks about this wall, and I always say, ‘Tell me how high it is. If it’s 25 feet, I’ll invest in a 30-foot ladder factory,’” Walls said, referring to Trump. “That’s not what’s stopping it.”
One X post that shared the clip reads: “Flashback: Kamala’s VP nominee, Tim Walz, says we should invest in ‘ladder factories’ to help illegal immigrants climb our border wall.”
But Waltz wasn’t suggesting that he would help people enter the United States without permission. He was actually discussing ways to prevent that from happening.
In the full segment, Waltz makes an investment joke and then offers an alternative idea for how to handle illegal crossings at the southern border, where apprehensions reached a record high in December but dropped to a new low under the Biden administration in late July after a temporary ban on asylum was imposed.
“We stop it with electronics, we stop it with more border agents, we stop it with the legal system that allows people to come here, like my relatives did,” Walls said at the end of the segment. “Let them come here and work and live the American dream.”
He also spoke in support of a bipartisan border security package aimed at reducing illegal border crossings that the Senate rejected in February.
— Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin contributed to this report.
___
CLAIM: Waltz changed the Minnesota flag to resemble the flag of Somalia.
FACT: Minnesota unveiled a new state flag and seal in May, but it was changed to replace an old design that Native Americans said evoked painful memories of conquest and displacement. The State Emblem Redesign Commission was established to oversee the development of a new design during the 2023 legislative session.
The change was made to remove the old state seal, which showed Native Americans running into the sunset while white settlers plowed their fields with rifles at the ready, a key feature of the old flag.
The committee included government officials, design professionals, tribes, and other community members of color. The committee’s statement of purpose stated that the design “should accurately and respectfully reflect Minnesota’s shared history, resources, and diverse cultural communities. No symbols, emblems, or likenesses, whether real or stylized, that exclusively represent a single community or people may be included in the design.”
The public submitted more than 2,600 suggestions, and the committee chose one from 25-year-old Andrew Frecker of Luverne as the basis for the flag.
Prekker said Walz had nothing to do with the flag’s creation and Somalia had nothing to do with its design. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the U.S. and is home to Somali-born U.S. Rep. Ilhan Oman, who is part of an informal group of progressive Democratic House members known as The Squad.
“The inspiration for my flag came from three main concepts inspired by Minnesota history and culture: the North Star, the shape of Minnesota, and the three stripes representing different aspects of Minnesota’s identity,” he wrote in an email.
Prekker’s original design had a white star on a blue background, with white, green, and light blue stripes running across the rest of the flag. The flag was compared online to the Somali state flag, which also has green, white, and blue stripes and stars. In the final design, the committee removed the stripes.
The final version of the flag featured a dark blue shape resembling Minnesota with a white eight-pointed star on the right side. The right side was lighter blue, symbolizing the state’s abundant water, which led to it being known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
The flag of Somalia has five stars on a bright blue background. “It has nothing to do with Somalia or any other country, and honestly, I didn’t even know Somalia existed until the flag scandal happened. The similarities that people want to see are just coincidences. It’s the flag of Minnesota, so that’s what I designed,” Frecker said.
___
Check out AP’s fact checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
