During the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night, Tim Walz misspoke and said he had “become friends with school shooters.”
A quick search would have revealed that Walz likely meant to say that he had become friends with the families of school shooting victims. He has repeatedly credited these families—including on stage Tuesday night—with changing his mind on gun control laws, helping him usher in some of America’s most progressive gun safety laws during his time as governor of Minnesota.
But if you were to look at right-wing social media feeds on Tuesday night, you could be forgiven for thinking that Walz sympathized with the perpetrators of some of the worst mass shootings in American history.
Led by former president Donald Trump, right-wing news feeds lit up with out-of-context video clips, memes, and calls for Walz to be disqualified from running, as Trump, who opposes any sort of gun control laws, launched a disingenuous attack on the Democratic vice presidential candidate.
During the debate, both candidates were asked about school shootings and the fact that gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and teens in the US. Vance falsely blamed the prevalence of mental health issues and illegal immigrants for the gun violence crisis in America, and outlined once again why he opposes red flag gun laws and legislation to ban certain semi-automatic rifles such as AR-15s.
When Walz spoke, he revealed that his own son had witnessed gun violence first hand. “I think all the parents watching tonight, this is your biggest nightmare,” Walz said. “I got a 17-year-old, and he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball. Those things don’t leave you.”
Walz, who has enacted red flag laws, signed legislation to prohibit automatic weapon modification devices, and enhanced background checks to curb the spread of gun violence explained how his viewpoint of gun control was impacted by meeting the families of school shooting victims.
“I sat in my office surrounded by dozens of the Sandy Hook parents, and they were looking at my seven-year-old’s picture on the wall,” said Walz. Their seven-year-olds were dead. And they were asking us to do something. And look, I’m a hunter. I own firearms. The vice president does. We understand that the Second Amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out.”
“I sat in that office with those Sandy Hook parents,” said Walz, adding: “I’ve become friends with school shooters. I’ve seen it.”
The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to a request from WIRED to clarify what Walz meant when he made this comment, but it appears likely he meant to say he had become friends with the families of school shooting victims, given his close relationship with many of them in recent years.
On the right, the gaffe was very quickly jumped on to push a disingenuous conspiracy that Walz, who has done more than many lawmakers in recent years to curb gun violence, was in some way compassionate towards school shooters.
“Did Tampon Tim just say he has ‘become friends with school shooters?’” Trump wrote on Truth Social using the nickname he has given Walz. “He isn’t even qualified to be Governor, let alone Vice President. Walz and Kamala DO NOT HAVE WHAT IT TAKES!”
Trump then posted two video clips of Walz making the comment and two graphics with Walz’s picture alongside the quote about school shooters. Trump also shared a screenshot of a post on X from Andrew Pollack, the father of a victim of a school shooting, who wrote: “My daughter was killed in the Parkland school shooting. It’s absolutely abhorrent that Tim Walz has befriended school shooters. Disqualifying.” Pollack’s post on X, which quotes a post from the official Trump War Room account, has been viewed 3.8 million times.
Moments later, Trump posted a meme of a mocked-up Trump-Vance yard sign with the tagline “Not Friends of School Shooters —a meme that was originally posted to X by Laura Loomer, a close ally of Trump who has, until recently, been seen traveling with the former president to campaign events.
Loomer, an antisemitic, far-right troll, took the conspiracy further, asking: “Was @Tim_Walz friends with Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Routh too?”—a reference to the men charged with attempting to assassinate Trump in recent months. Loomer also posted a mock-up poster for the sitcom Friends with the actors’ faces replaced by Walz and a number of mass shooters.
While most of the post-debate conversation on television focused on other aspects of the event, Trump was clearly unhappy that more people were not focusing on Walz’s gaffe. “Why aren’t the after shows talking about the fact that Walz said, ‘I’m friends with school shooters,’” Trump wrote around midnight on Tuesday.
But across the right-wing ecosystem of talking heads and pundits, the claim that Walz was friends with school shooters quickly took hold.
“Calling it right now but Tim Walz saying he’s “friends with school shooters” will be the #1 thing remembered about this debate,” Jack Posobiec, the far-right troll and Pizzagate promoter who was part of the official Trump campaign war room for the debate, wrote on Telegram. “It’s the ‘eating the cats’ of the VP debate.”
“Is it normal to befriend school shooters?” Charlie Kirk, the founder of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA group, wrote on Telegram.
Posobiec also posted multiple memes about the situation, including one showing Walz superimposed into a video of an actual school shooting. He also posted a video recorded by Chaya Raichik, who runs the hate-fiulled anti-LGBTQ account LibsofTikTok and was also in the GOP’s debate war room.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host and close ally of Trump, opened his post-debate show discussing the incident, claiming it “raises a lot of other questions” and failing to account for the fact that Walz misspoke.
Hundreds of other right-wing accounts on X posted clips of Walz’s comment without any context, dozens of them racking up millions of views on their posts. Others posted a clip of Walz after the debate getting pizza with his wife, when a reporter asked: “Can you clarify what you meant when you said you became friends with school shooters?” Walz refused to answer the question.
Shannon Watts, the founder of gun control activist group Moms Demand Action, hit back at the disingenuous attacks on Walz, outlining his achievements in helping to introduce gun control laws in Minnesota in recent years.
“I’ve had the honor of knowing Gov Tim Walz for years and have had a front row seat to his compassion and courage on the issue of gun safety,” Watts wrote on X. “He didn’t just listen to the Moms Demand Action volunteers he met with—he kept his commitment to make Minnesota safer.”
Watts pointed out that along with the introduction of the red flag law and universal background checks, Walz’ administration had ushered in “one of the largest investments in community-based violence prevention programs of any state to date” along with “legislation to prohibit automatic weapon modification devices and to collect gun crime data.”
Watts also attacked Vance’s comments on gun safety, pointing out that he recently said that school shootings were a “fact of life” the people “have to accept” in America. During the debate, Vance variously blamed migrants, mental health, and school buildings themselves for the high rates of gun violence, while dismissing the ease of access to gun ownership.
“Vance says instead of passing stronger gun laws, we should just turn schools into fortresses guarded by armed police to protect them from gunmen,” wrote Watts. “He neglects to mention that over 80% of school shooters are students, not strangers who walk in out of the shadows.”