Despite new criticism, Trump told Walz in 2020 he was ‘very happy’ with his handling of George Floyd protests

(WASHINGTON) — In the hours after Vice President Kamala Harris announced Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, allies of former President Donald Trump rushed to denigrate the Minnesota Democrat, seizing on criticism of his handling of the riots in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020.

“He allowed rioters to burn down the streets of Minneapolis,” Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican candidate for vice president, said Tuesday.

But at the time, Trump expressed support for Walz’s handling of the protests, according to a recording of a phone call obtained by ABC News — telling a group of governors that Walz “dominated,” and praising his leadership as an example for other states to follow.

“I know Gov. Walz is on the phone, and we spoke, and I fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days,” Trump told a group of governors on June 1, 2020, according to a recording of the call, in which he also called Walz an “excellent guy.”

“I was very happy with the last couple of days, Tim,” Trump continued. “You called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast it was like bowling pins.”

Trump also suggested on the call that it was his encouragement that sparked Walz to call in the National Guard: “I said, you got to use the National Guard in big numbers,” Trump said. A spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign said Wednesday that was untrue.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said Trump lauded Walz only after the governor heeded his advice to enlist support from the National Guard.

“Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days, despite President Trump’s offer to deploy soldiers and cries for help from the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis,” Leavitt said in a statement to ABC News. “In this daily briefing phone call with Governors on June 1, days after the riots began, President Trump acknowledged Governor Walz for FINALLY taking action to deploy the National Guard to end the violence in the city.”

Trump’s contemporaneous approval of Walz’s decision-making in the wake of George Floyd’s murder undermines one of Republicans’ most vocal lines of attack against the vice presidential nominee. Critics have accused Walz of stalling the mobilization of the National Guard to quell rioters who set fire to 1,500 buildings, caused some $500 million in property damage, and were linked to at least three deaths.

Walz, himself a 24-year veteran of the National Guard, ultimately summoned more than 7,000 guardsmen to the Twin Cities. But that decision came 18 hours after Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey initially asked the governor to activate military personnel.

“This hesitation cost Minnesotans their lives, communities, and livelihoods,” according to an investigative report compiled by Republicans in the state Senate.

At the time, Walz condemned the Republicans’ report — which was published just weeks before his 2022 reelection — as a political hit job that was “unhelpful.” More recently, Walz brushed aside scrutiny of his handling of the protests.

“It is what it is,” he recently told reporters. “And I simply believe that we try to do the best we can.”

Inside the aftermath

In the days after the murder of George Floyd, as agitators set fires and laid siege to a police precinct, city officials scrambled to contain the unrest.

Floyd, a Black man, was killed by Officer Derek Chauvin on Monday, May 25, 2020. By Wednesday evening, the city’s police “had expended all available resources,” according to a copy of the written request for the National Guard prepared by police officials.

At 6:29 p.m. that Wednesday, Frey called Walz to request the National Guard, he later told the Star-Tribune. That verbal communication was followed up hours later, at 9:11 p.m., with a written request from city police officials. A copy of the written request obtained by state senators indicated that the city would need 600 guardsmen to help with area security, transportation assistance and logistical support.

That evening, Frey’s office crafted a draft press release announcing that the National Guard had been called in, but did not disseminate it, according to records released by the city and reported by local outlets. Instead, city aides would have to wait another 15 hours before Walz would formally mobilize the National Guard.

In text messages released by the city, a member of the mayor’s staff asked, “What’s happening? As far as the Guard,” around 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday night. Another staffer replied that Frey “said Walz was hesitating.”

“According to Minneapolis officials, the governor’s office responded that they would consider the request, but the city did not receive any follow-up until much later,” according to an after-action report commissioned by the state.

On Thursday afternoon, Walz imposed a curfew on city residents and formally mobilized the National Guard. The first troops arrived within hours, and by that weekend, the unrest had largely been quelled.

On Friday, Walz told reporters he had spoken with Trump the day before and that Trump had “pledged his support in terms of anything we need in terms of supplies to get to us.”

Days later, on the June 1 phone call with governors, Walz thanked Trump and accepted his praise before making comments of his own — expressing support for peaceful protesters and suggesting that governors who might otherwise hesitate to call in the National Guard could do so delicately, and frame them as “not an occupying force,” but instead as “neighbors, teachers, business owners.”

“That’s a really effective method,” Walz said.

Trump agreed, but added his own spin on the role of guardsmen.

“It got so bad a few nights ago that the people wouldn’t have minded an occupying force,” Trump said. “I wish we had an occupying force in there.”

An ‘unproductive’ spat

A pair of after-action reports commissioned by the city and state cited private miscommunications and public disputes between Walz and Frey as impediments to effectively handling the protests. At one point, Walz characterized the city’s response as an “abject failure.”

“Several interviewees blamed the Mayor and Governor for their public disagreements about the response to the protests and expressed that this was unproductive,” according to the report commissioned by the city, which was released in March 2022.

The state-commissioned report arrived at a similar conclusion: “Other state officials claim that the request became complicated when elected officials became involved (i.e., the Minneapolis mayor, the governor’s office).”

Another complicating factor, those after-action reports indicated, was the failure of city officials to articulate their needs. The requests made on May 27 “initially lacked clarity and that more information and time was needed for [the state’s emergency management office] to develop the necessary details of the mission to activate the Minnesota Guard,” one report said.

For his part, Walz initially argued that mobilizing thousands of National Guardsmen requires time.

“The average person maybe assumes that there’s soldiers waiting in helicopters to drop in like they do in movies,” Walz said that Tuesday, May 26. “Actually, they’re band teachers and small business owners. They’re folks working in a garage in Fergus Falls who get a call that says you’ve got 12 hours to report to your armory.”

Days later, however, Walz told a reporter that “if the issue was that the state should have moved faster, that is on me.”

Lt. Gen. Jon Jensen, the director of the Minnesota National Guard at the time, later testified before state senators that, had the National Guard been deployed sooner, the protests might not have been so destructive.

“If we had done things differently on Tuesday, as it relates to numbers, as it relates to tactics, could we have avoided some of this? My unprofessional opinion as it relates to law enforcement is ‘yes,'” Jensen said. “My professional military opinion is ‘yes.'”