Trump praised Tim Walz’s handling of 2020 George Floyd protests

Republicans are attacking Tim Walz’s response to the 2020 Minneapolis protests, but at the time, then-President Donald Trump said he “completely” agreed with the Minnesota governor’s handling of the unrest following the killing of George Floyd, undermining a key line of attack from Republicans this week after Walz was named Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate in the 2024 election.

“I completely agree with the way he’s handled this over the last few days,” Trump said of Walz in a June 1, 2020, call, in which he also described the Democratic governor as “a great 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 featured participation from a number of governors, as nationwide protests, some of which escalated into violent riots, spread following Floyd’s death on May 25.

Details of the call, in which Trump implored governors across the country to “dominate” the protesters, have been previously reported, and the CNN published the full transcript of the call on the day it occurred in 2020.

It’s not uncommon for even bitter political rivals to offer each other measured praise in the wake of natural disasters or major national crises — especially those that require cooperation between state and federal governments. But more than four years later, Trump’s praise for Tim Walz takes on new meaning as the Republican candidate and his allies try to remind Americans of that year’s nationwide protests by associating Walz with the images of Minneapolis in flames and the subsequent damage.

“You have a great National Guard out there ready to go in and fight hard. I tell you, what you did in Minneapolis was incredible. You went in and you dominated. And it happened immediately,” Trump told the governors. “Tim Walz. Again, I was very pleased with the last few days. Tim, you called in big numbers and the big numbers knocked them down so fast it was like knocking down bowling pins.”

The call came a week after Floyd’s death. At the time and in the years since, Republicans have publicly criticized Walz for allegedly delaying calling in the Minnesota National Guard.

Trump’s 2024 campaign, in responding to the request from CNN regarding the 2020 praise for Walz and the details of the call, they claimed that he was only complimentary of the Minnesota governor, since by June 1, Walz had “already taken action.” However, they argued that Trump was always frustrated that Walz had not taken more action sooner.

Walz first activated the National Guard on May 28, three days after Floyd’s death and the same day protesters set fire to the outside of a Minneapolis police station.

“The important thing here is the timing and context of these comments. He was praising a governor who finally, after days of madness, had done something. So it wasn’t in real time. It was after Walz finally did something about it,” a senior Trump campaign aide told The Verge. CNN .

A second Trump aide reiterated the point, telling CNN that the call came “in the context of what President Trump has encouraged many of these governors and local leaders to do, which was to finally stop or do something about these riots. It had been seven days, or however many days, that Minneapolis had been burning, and President Trump was essentially saying: finally, folks, finally, the burning and the looting and the rioting has stopped.”

Close allies of Trump echoed the aide’s sentiment, noting the panic among government officials at the time about how to contain the unrest and the urgency of seeking support to stop the violence.

During the 2020 call, Walz also expressed some words of appreciation for the Trump administration’s response, thanking Esper for “strategic guidance.” He also asked the Trump administration for help with communication about the role of National Guard troops.

But in the hours after Walz was announced as the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee on Monday (5), Republicans attacked his tenure as governor, with much of the criticism focusing on the timing of his decision to call up the state’s National Guard. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, told reporters earlier this week that Walz “allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020.”

Walz “stood idly by and let Minneapolis burn,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote in X. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott echoed that charge. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said Walz “could have stopped” the riots “if he wanted to,” while the GOP’s research arm accused Walz of running away “like a coward” as Minneapolis burned.

A spokesperson for Cotton’s Senate campaign said Walz “should have immediately sent in the National Guard, state police and restored order instead of letting violent criminals destroy a large portion of the city before being released from jail by Kamala Harris,” alluding to a tweet Harris posted in support of a bail fund in Minnesota.

“As Tim Walz has admitted, his handling of the riots was an ‘absolute failure,’” Cotton’s spokesman said, referring to statements the governor has made about the city’s response to the unrest. Spokespeople for Abbott and DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon (7).

Even before Kamala chose Walz, Trump criticized the governor on the issue.

“Every voter in Minnesota needs to know that when the violent gangs of anarchists, looters and Marxists came to burn 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 riots.

“I sent the National Guard to save Minneapolis, while Kamala Harris sided with the arsonists and rioters and raised money to release the criminals,” Trump said.

Walz, who activated the National Guard after peaceful protests devolved into rioting, looting and violence, said in 2020 that he did so in response to requests from the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

During the June 2020 call, Trump said he directed Walz to call up the National Guard, before praising the officers for their performance.

“I said you have to use the National Guard,” Trump said, referring to Minneapolis. “They didn’t use it at first, and then they did, and I’ll tell you, it’s true, I don’t know what it was … those guys, on day three, day four, they went through that situation like it was butter. They went right through it and there’s been no problems since.”

The governor has faced some bipartisan criticism over the timing of his order to activate the National Guard. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat who was facing scrutiny over the chaos in his city, said in August 2020 that he had verbally asked Walz on the evening of May 27 to deploy the Guard, but that the governor had hesitated. Walz disputed Frey’s account at the time, saying the request was not an official request, which had been made the next day. (Any tensions between the two appear to have cooled.)

Some of the most notable violence in Minneapolis, including the looting and burning of a police station in the city, occurred on the night of May 28 — after Walz had already activated some of the Guard. Walz and Trump spoke that same day. The governor activated the entire National Guard on May 30.

In the June 1 call with Walz and other governors, Trump appeared to acknowledge that he was pleased with how the state Guard responded to the protests: “Yesterday and the day before, compared to the first few days, it was just — I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said. Walz responded: “Absolutely.”

“A lot of people don’t understand who the National Guard is and you need to go out there, from a public image and crisis management perspective, and make sure that they’re not seen as an occupying force, but as your neighbors, your teachers, your business owners, those things,” Walz said on the call.

Trump said he believed this was a good idea, although he added that he thought “people wouldn’t have minded an occupying force.”

“I wish they had an occupying force there,” Trump added.

Later that day, federal police would forcibly remove peaceful protesters from a park outside the White House so that Trump could walk across the park and pose for a photo with a Bible outside St. John’s Church.