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Tim Walz appeared to make a quick escape Saturday when asked about the discovery of six slain hostages in the Gaza Strip. The Minnesota governor was posed the question at his home state’s state fair in St. Paul, hours after the bodies were found in an underground tunnel in the Rafah area of the city.
From the footage, it was unclear whether the potential vice president heard the inquiry, but as soon as it was uttered, he bid onlookers farewell. The captives – identified Saturday as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt Ori Danino – were among the more than 200 taken by militants on October 7. Five were taken from the targeted Israeli music festival, and another from a nearby farming community. The IDF said all were ‘brutally’ murdered ‘a short while’ before troops were able to locate them.
‘What’s your reaction to the six hostages found in Gaza,’ the unseen journalist asks in the clip, which shows Walz clutching a milkshake as he made rounds during his brief drop-in at the 12-day event. At that point, a staffer for the politician appears to motion to him that it’s time to leave, leading Walz to announce his departure. ‘All right, thanks everybody!’ he tells the crowd, before walking off to a round of applause. Joined by his wife, Gwen, and their daughter Hope, the politician was swiftly surrounded by a security detail before being whisked away.
At another point during his visit, the 60-year-old munched on a porkchop on a stick – a local delicacy. ‘For those not from Minnesota, just to be clear, there’s a lot of great state fairs in the country, this is the best one,’ Walz told reporters, in another light exchange. ‘I can say that having tried pork chops in Iowa,’ he went on to joke, ‘I’m so happy I got a day out here.’ Sharing video of him eating the street food at the festival frequented by local farmers, he posted on Twitter: ‘Breakfast of champions: pork chop on a stick.’
The visit also saw Walz repeatedly highlight his state’s farming sector, as local ranchers and landowners championed their products. In all, he spent about an hour there, before leaving ahead of a planned meeting with union leaders in Milwaukee Monday. Staying away from subjects like policy, he told local outlet mprnews of how he’s balanced his role as Governor amid his and Harris’s whirlwind campaign. ‘I got a good team being able to manage my schedule,’ he told onlookers.
Meanwhile, overseas, the bodies of the long-missing hostages were located. A senior Hamas official, Izzat al-Rishq, insisted Israel was responsible for their deaths, as it has refused to sign a ceasefire deal. Such sentiments were echoed Saturday by a group representing the families of those held hostage, who demanded Netanyahu ‘address the nation and take responsibility for abandoning the hostages’. ‘The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages,’ they wrote.
They further claimed that all six captives were ‘murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, punishment, and starvation in Hamas captivity’. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said Saturday that Israel would not rest until those responsible were brought to justice. ‘Whoever murders hostages – does not want a deal,’ he proclaimed.
The IDF added that the location the bodies were discovered was a little over half a mile from a tunnel where another hostage was rescued alive days earlier, two days after Walz appeared alongside running mate Kamala Harris for an interview on CNN.
During the sitdown, both stopped short of saying they would alter Biden’s policy toward arm sales to Israel – a sticking point to some voters.
Despite airing some desired changes to some policies, Harris said her policy on arming Israel will not change if she is elected president. In the days since, neither have commented on the recent discovery.
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