Bob Unruh began an Aug. 23 WorldNetDaily article with a journalistically unprofessional, highly misleading partisan attack:
Tim Walz, the leftist Minnesota governor now campaigning as Kamala Harris pick to be No. 2 on the Democrat presidential ticket this year, has revealed some hidden depths already.
For example, his repeated claims to be a retired “command sergeant major” when he never actually earned the requirements to claim that rank in retirement.
And his various claims about carrying weapons of war in war, when his military duty sent him to Italy, as a lawyer, not a combat zone.
Then there are the details of that drunken driving arrest record in Nebraska.
And his leftist ideologies, shepherding into law in his state a provision for social workers to take custody of children if their parents don’t adequately push for their transgenderism.
Then comes the smear:
Now there’s another factor, spotted as he was walking on stage at the Democrat [sic] National Convention this week with his family, including son Gus.
He appears to jerk his son’s arm, and in a not too friendly way.
[…]Social media commenters explained Walz’s apparent actions with, “That’s the universal grab saying ‘Shut up and pretend that you’re happy!” and “Definitely a non-verbal reaction fueled by some sort of rage.”
As we’ve come to expect from WND, Unruh is lying. As fact-checker Snopes pointed out when WND’s fellow misinformers spread this lie:
In August 2024, users on X promoted a video clip they claimed showed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz being “abusive” toward his 17-year-old son, Gus, pulling on his arm “out of anger” when his family joined him onstage following his acceptance speech as the vice-presidential nominee at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
However, a close examination of video from Walz’s Aug. 21 speech revealed that he pulled his son’s arm to ensure he didn’t walk directly into a teleprompter. In the same video, Walz’s daughter, Hope, can be seen walking around the opposite side of the same teleprompter.
As we previously reported, Walz and his wife, Gwen, revealed to People on Aug. 7 that Gus “has a nonverbal learning disorder, ADHD and an anxiety disorder — all conditions that they call his ‘secret power.'”
According to both the NVLD Project and the Cleveland Clinic, nonverbal learning disorders can affect visual-spatial awareness. The NVLD Project website specifically mentions, “spatial awareness (bumping into people and things).”
Unruh censored that information from his readers. Snopes also noted that some right-wing misinformers corrected the record — something Unruh and WND can’t be bothered to do. Instead, Unruh published a statement from right-wing website Twitchy trying to deny it was mocking Gus Walz: “Please note, we are in no way attacking or picking on Gus Walz, it’s not his fault his dad grabbed his arm and yanked him into place in that way. We had to watch the video more than once to truly see Walz’s face as he yanked his son around on that stage. … He was angry. He was maybe even enraged.”
Or, you know, he was acting like a concerned parent by trying to keep Gus from hurting himself by running into a teleprompter. As always at WND, the lazy smear gets more attention than the truth.