Does a video on X show Tim Walz calling Donald Trump and JD Vance "a threat to democracy" after Trump survived a second apparent assassination attempt? No, that's not true: That attempt was made in September 2024, while videos show Walz's statement was in late July 2024. There is nothing to confirm the video on X was made in mid- or late September 2024.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on September 15, 2024. The caption read:
He should be forced to resign
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Sep 18 13:23:59 2024 UTC)
The post contained a video of Walz speaking, calling the Trump-Vance ticket "a threat to democracy."
Text above the video said: "Trump Just Survived the Second Assassination Attempt, and Tim Walz is Calling Trump A Threat To Democracy."
The post does not provide any evidence that this video was made after the apparent second assassination attempt on Trump, which occurred on September 15, 2024.
A reverse image search (archived here) of a still from the video showed that July 28, 2024, and July 29, 2024, were the earliest posts we could find of this exact video. Here, here and here are three videos published in late July that show Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, in the same outfit and with the same people, wearing the same clothes, standing behind him (archived here, here and here).
The screenshots below compare the two people in the background of the video in the claim with those in the videos in July 2024. The claim video has green highlighting. The comparison videos Lead Stories found have red highlighting:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Sep 18 16:29:21 2024 UTC)
The video below was published on July 29, 2024:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Sep 18 16:31:44 2024 UTC)
And the video below was published on July 29, 2024:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Wed Sep 18 16:35:38 2024 UTC)
The third video, below, is cropped closely to Walz's face, so it's hard to see the same two people highlighted in the previous two videos. However, Walz makes the same statement about Trump-Vance being a threat to democracy. This video was published on July 28, 2024:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Sep 18 16:39:18 2024 UTC)
Using keywords, Lead Stories searched in the Google News archive and found no credible reporting (archived here) to confirm the claim that Walz's remarks came after the second attempted assassination.
We have contacted the Walz campaign and will update this article when a relevant response is received.
Other Lead Stories fact checks concerning Tim Walz are here. More Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to the Trump assassination attempts are here.
More Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning the 2024 U.S. election are here.
