By Alayna Treene, Michael Williams and Kristen Holmes | CNN
(CNN) — Republicans are attacking Tim Walz’s response to unrest in Minneapolis in 2020, but at the time, then-President Donald Trump said he “fully” agreed with how the Minnesota governor handled rioting in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, undercutting a key line of GOP attack this week after Walz was named Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate.
“I fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days,” Trump said of Walz on a June 1, 2020, call during which he also described the Democratic governor as “an excellent guy.”
The call was led by Trump, who was joined by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and included a series of governors as protests across the country, some of which devolved into violent rioting, were breaking out following the police killing of Floyd on May 25.
Details from the call, during which Trump implored governors across the country to “dominate” protesters, have previously been reported, and CNN published the call’s full transcript the day it happened in 2020.
It’s not uncommon for even the most bitter of political rivals to offer tempered praise toward one another in the aftermath of a natural disaster or serious nationwide crisis – especially ones that require cooperation in responses between state and federal governments. But more than four years later, Trump’s praise for Walz takes on new meaning as the GOP nominee and his allies have sought to jolt Americans’ memories of the nationwide unrest that summer, linking Walz to pictures of Minneapolis engulfed in flames and the aftermath of the destruction.
“You’ve got a big National Guard out there that’s ready to come in and fight like hell. I tell you, what they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated. And it happened immediately,” Trump told the governors. “Tim Walz. Again, I was very happy with the last couple of days. Tim, you called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast it was like bowling pins.”
The call took place a week after Floyd was killed. At the time, and in the years since, Republicans publicly criticized Walz over whether he waited too long to call in Minnesota’s National Guard.
Trump’s 2024 campaign, responding to CNN’s request about his 2020 praise for Walz and the details of the call, said that he was only complimentary of the Minnesota governor given that by June 1, Walz “had acted.” They argued, however, that Trump had always been frustrated that Walz hadn’t taken more action sooner.
Walz first activated the Guard on May 28, three days after Floyd was killed, and the same day protesters lit the outside of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct on fire.
“The important thing here is the timing and context for these remarks. He was complimenting a governor that finally, after days of madness, had finally done something. So it wasn’t in real time. It was after Walz finally did something about it,” a senior Trump campaign adviser told CNN.
A second Trump adviser reiterated the point, telling CNN the call came “in the context of what President Trump encouraged a lot of these governors and local leaders to do, in finally stopping or doing something about these riots. It had been seven days, or however long, days that Minneapolis had been burning, where President Trump, is essentially saying, finally, you guys, finally, the burning and looting and rioting have stopped.”
Allies close to Trump echoed the adviser’s sentiment, noting the panic among government officials at the time on how to curb the riots, and the urgency to reach across the aisle to stop the violence.
During the 2020 call, Walz also offered some words of thanks for the Trump administration’s response, thanking Esper for his “strategic guidance.” He also asked the Trump administration to help with messaging surrounding the role of National Guard troops.
But in the hours after Walz was announced as Democrats’ vice presidential candidate on Monday, Republicans attacked his tenure as governor — with much of the criticism focused on the timing of his decision to call in his state’s National Guard. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, told reporters earlier this week that Walz “allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020.”
Walz “sat by and let Minneapolis burn,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on X. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott echoed that accusation. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said Walz “could have stopped” the rioting, “if he wanted to,” while the Republican Party’s research arm accused Walz of fleeing “like a coward” while Minneapolis burned.
A spokesperson for Cotton’s Senate campaign said Walz “should have immediately sent in the Guard, the state police, and restored order instead of letting violent criminals destroy a huge portion of the city, before they were bailed out of jail by Kamala Harris,” alluding to a tweet Harris posted in support of a Minnesota bail fund.
“As Tim Walz has admitted, his handling of the riots was an ‘abject failure,’” Cotton’s spokesperson said, referencing remarks the governor made about the city’s response to the riots. Spokespeople for Abbott and DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
Even before Harris selected Walz, Trump criticized the governor on the subject.
“Every voter in Minnesota needs to know that when the violent mobs of anarchists and looters and Marxists came to burn down Minneapolis four years ago … Remember me? I couldn’t get your governor to act,” Trump told the crowd at his rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, last month, before falsely claiming that he, not Walz, activated the National Guard in response to the unrest.
“I sent in the National Guard to save Minneapolis, while Kamala Harris sided with the arsonist and rioters and raised money to bail out the criminals,” Trump said.
Walz, who first activated the Guard after peaceful protests had devolved into instances of rioting, looting and violence, said in 2020 he did so in response to requests from the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
During the June 2020 call, Trump said he had directed Walz to call in the National Guard, before lauding the way the officers performed.
“I said you gotta use the National Guard,” Trump said, referring to Minneapolis. “They didn’t at first, then they did, and I’ll tell you that’s true, I don’t know what it was … those guys, third night, fourth night, they walked through that stuff like it was butter. They walked right through and you haven’t had any problems since.”
The governor faced some bipartisan criticism for the timing of his order to activate the Guard. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat who was facing scrutiny over chaos in his city, said in August 2020 that he had verbally asked Walz on the evening of May 27 to send in the Guard but that the governor hesitated. Walz refuted Frey’s account at the time, saying the ask did not constitute an official request, which he said came the next day. (Any tension between the two seems to have cooled.)
Some of the most notable instances of violence in Minneapolis, including the ransacking and burning of a city police precinct, took place the night of May 28 – after Walz had already activated a portion of the Guard. Walz and Trump spoke the same day. The governor activated the entire guard on May 30.
In the June 1 call with Walz and the other governors, Trump seemed to acknowledge that he was satisfied with how the state Guard responded to the protests: “Yesterday and the day before, compared to the first few days, was just – never seen anything like it,” Trump said. Walz responded: “Absolutely.”
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“A lot of people don’t understand who the National Guard is and you need to get out there, from a PR perspective, and make sure that it’s not seen as a occupying force, but it’s their neighbors, school teachers, business owners, those types of things,” Walz said on the call.
Trump said he believed that was a good idea, though he added he thought “that the people wouldn’t have minded an occupying force.”
“I wish they had an occupying force in there,” Trump added.
Later that day, federal law enforcement would forcibly clear peaceful protesters from a park outside the White House, making way for Trump to cross the park and pose for a photo op with a Bible outside St. John’s Church.
