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Greeted Crowds

Does a viral post prove that the Minnesota governor and former running mate of Kamala Harris performed a Nazi salute in public? No, that's not true: The post took a single frame from a video out of context. As the recording proves, it was part of a longer movement, not a separate gesture. Walz put his hand in the air above his head to greet the attendees of a campaign rally. No credible source compared it to a Nazi salute at the time.

The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on January 22, 2025. It said:

Holy shlit. Is everyone who voted for Harris-Walz a Nazi supporter???

This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Jan 23 15:20:40 2025 UTC)

The post implied that Gov. Tim Walz (archived here), who was the vice presidential pick (archived here) of the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, raised his arm at a 45-degree angle to demonstrate one variation of the Nazi salute.

However, that was not what he did.

As seen in the recorded livestream of the August 6, 2024, campaign rally in Philadelphia, the post took a random frame out of context. In reality, it was part of a movement, in which Walz raised his arm much higher to greet the attendees.

The composite image below shows a sequence of frames from the video:

(Source: YouTube screenshots taken on Thu Jan 23 between 21:43:21 and 22:03:52 2025 UTC; composite image by Lead Stories)

A search across Google News for the date of the event and the next day using the keywords seen here (archived here) showed fewer than 10 articles. Lead Stories manually reviewed them: None mentioned a "Nazi salute."

The results included several materials published by the outlets serving Jewish audiences. One article discussed "Yiddish wisdom of Tim Walz" (archived here), another one called him a "pro-Israel" governor (archived here). Another story (archived here) published by a Jewish outlet cited, in part, President of Democratic Majority for Israel Mark Mellman (archived here), who rejected accusations of antisemitism targeting the campaign after not selecting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as a running mate. Finally, the search results showed a piece pointing out that Shapiro, who was present at the rally in Philadelphia, quoted Talmud (archived here) in his opening remarks.

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This was not the only claim about a public person falsely accused of performing a Nazi salute that spread on social media in the second half of January 2025. As Lead Stories previously wrote, similar posts targeted Taylor Swift and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The account that posted the claim reviewed in this fact check has previously spread other unsubstantiated speculations. Lead Stories has debunked them, for example, here and here.

Other Lead Stories articles mentioning Tim Walz can be found here.