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Tim Walz has really improved his career lately by calling Republicans «weird.» Maybe a guy who chose his wedding date to help him remember the Tiananmen Square massacre and spent his honeymoon in China should think twice about calling other people weird.
After graduating from Nebraska’s Chadron State College [in 1989], Walz, then 25 years old, went to teach English and American history to high-school students in Foshan, a city in China’s southern Guangdong province, as part of a yearlong Harvard University program blessed by Washington.
The Minnesota governor and freshly minted Democratic vice-presidential nominee has described the experience as humbling and formative. It was also the first of some 30 visits that Walz has made to China as educator, businessman and politician that took him to far corners of the country and have given him insight into America’s relationship with its biggest global competitor.
After teaching, Walz formed a travel company and for years led American students on tours to China—one in 1994 doubled as his honeymoon, according to a profile that year in the Star-Herald of Scottsbluff, Neb. In fact, Walz planned his wedding date to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown on June 4: “He wanted to have a date he’d always remember,” his future wife, then known as Gwen Whipple, told the newspaper.
How many elected officials spent their honeymoons in communist countries? Walz is the only one I know of besides Bernie Sanders who spent his honeymoon in Russia. Is it nefarious? Not necessarily but it is pretty unusual. One could even say it’s weird and according to Tim Walz, weird is bad.
