Fact check: Trump revives false claim that he, not Minnesota’s governor, deployed the National Guard to Minneapolis in 2020

(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump has revived his four-year-old false claim about how he and Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz handled the civil unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

Walz is among the Democrats whom sources say Vice President Kamala Harris is considering as a potential running mate. Trump, the Republican nominee, claimed during a Saturday campaign speech in Minnesota: “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. He’s supposed to call in the National Guard or the Army. And he didn’t do it. I couldn’t get your governor. So I sent in the National Guard to save Minneapolis.” (Trump went on to criticize Harris for her own response to the unrest.)

CNN fact-checked this Trump story in July 2020. But he has repeated the tale on multiple subsequent occasions, including an abbreviated version during his June 2024 presidential debate with President Joe Biden.

Facts First: Trump’s claims that he sent the National Guard to Minneapolis in 2020 and that Walz refused to do so are both wrong. Walz, not Trump, sent the National Guard to Minneapolis — and Walz first deployed the Guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself. 

The Minnesota National Guard, the entity that Walz deployed, is under the command of the governor, not the president. The president has the power to federalize states’ Guard troops under certain circumstances, but Trump never did so during the 2020 unrest in Minnesota.

After Trump began telling this false story in June 2020, Walz spokesperson Teddy Tschann provided a statement to CNN in the form of a question-and-answer sheet. It said, among other things: “Did President Trump ‘call out’ the Guard? No.” “Did Gov. Walz call out the Guard? Yes.” “Did Gov. Walz call out the National Guard at the direction of the President? No. He activated the Minnesota National Guard at the request of the Mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, before he talked to the White House.”

Evidence shows Trump’s claim is false

Public evidence confirms that Walz, who served in the Army National Guard from 1981 to 2005, deployed the Guard himself in May 2020.

Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020. There were protests in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, some of them involving violence. And there was looting, violence and arson, along with peaceful protest, on May 27, 2020.

On May 28, 2020, Walz issued a press release just after 4 p.m. local time announcing he had signed an executive order activating the Minnesota National Guard. At 4:13 p.m. local time that day, the Minnesota National Guard announced on social media that adjutant general Maj. Gen. Jon Jensen had said, “We are ready and prepared to answer the Governor’s request. We are currently in process of assigning and preparing units to respond.”

At 10:41 p.m. local time that night, after a Minneapolis police precinct building was set on fire, the Minnesota National Guard announced that “we have activated more than 500 soldiers to St. Paul, Minneapolis and surrounding communities.”

Then, at 11:53 p.m. local time, Trump posted twice on social media.

In one post, Trump threatened to send in the Guard if Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey did not “get his act together and bring the City under control.” In the other post, Trump wrote, “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

In neither post did Trump claim to have been the person who sent in the Guard. He began publicly making such claims in June 2020.

Walz has been criticized by both Republicans and some Democrats for his handling of the unrest. Frey said in August 2020 that he had verbally asked Walz on the evening of May 27, 2020 to send in the Guard but that Walz had hesitated; Walz pushed back on Frey’s account, saying the mayor’s May 27, 2020 comments on the call had not constituted an official request, which came in writing the next day.

Regardless of what happened in their conversation or the merits of how Walz managed the crisis, it is indisputable that Walz, not Trump, was the person who activated the Guard. Similarly, while it’s possible that Trump’s public pressure contributed to Walz’s May 30, 2020 decision to greatly increase the size of the deployment by mobilizing the entire Minnesota National Guard — though Walz’s office denied in 2020 that Trump had anything to do with it —  this increase, too, was indisputably Walz’s act, not Trump’s.

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