No, Tim Walz Is Not Friends with School Shooters

Right wing lawmakers, pundits, and trolls have jumped on the moment in the vice presidential debate when Tim Walz said he was “friends with school shooters.”

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.

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