‘These folks know me’: Tim Walz clears up ‘friends with school shooters’ blunder

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) on Wednesday said he needed to “be more specific” during the first and only vice presidential debate when an awkward word jumble resulted in him unintentionally saying he’s “become friends with school shooters.”

“I was talking about meeting people where there are school shooters, and I need to be more specific on that,” he told an NBC News reporter during a press gaggle in Pennsylvania less than 24 hours after debating Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) in New York City. “But I am passionate about this.”

He went on to say that the issue of gun control for him and his wife “as teachers, as parents is so personal.”

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“I’ve become good friends with these Parkland students and of course the Sandy Hook parents,” he said about students and parents from Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Sandy Hook Elementary, both past sites of school shootings.

“Really haven't seen any legitimate confusion about that flub,” Semafor reporter David Weigel wrote on X, comparing the botched line with “a George W. Bush ‘put food on your family’ sort of word jumble.”

But that didn’t stop Walz’s opponent from attacking the former teacher and coach at a rally Wednesday.

“I said, 'Did he really say that sir?'” Vance told rallygoers he asked former President Donald Trump in a conversation about the debate. “And I said, 'Then that was probably only the third or fourth dumbest comment Tim Walz made that night.'”