Tim Walz really has a habit of just saying whatever he thinks will help him win an election. When he ran for congress the first time he outright lied about his DUI record and also fudged some details of his service record. He never served "in war" as he once claimed (the campaign admitted he misspoke). He also didn't retire as a Command Sergeant Major. He was actually a rank below that after retirement because he never finished the work for the higher rank.

Here we are nearly 20 years after he started lying about his own biography. Walz is on the biggest stage of his life and he's still just making stuff up. In this case, he has been saying for months that he and his wife used IVF to have kids. He's been saying this, not coincidentally, just as the Democratic Party has been trying to turn conservative opposition to IVF into another winning campaign issue. Here he is back in March talking to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Trying to start a family, they’d been going through fertility treatments at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester for seven years. Each time they hoped for good news, only to be told the treatments hadn’t worked.

“I said, ‘Not again,’” Walz recalled. “She said, ‘No, I’m pregnant.’ It’s not by chance that we named our daughter Hope.”

The DFL governor is opening up about his family’s experience going through fertility treatments in the wake of an Alabama Supreme Court ruling last month that said embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) should be considered children. Several IVF clinics in Alabama immediately suspended treatments in response to the ruling, and lawmakers across the country are scrambling to shore up laws to prevent something similar from happening in their state.

Here he is talking about it on MSNBC:

THREAD: In addition to his military career & drunk driving arrest, there’s another topic about which @Tim_Walz has been lying for political purposes —the conception of his own children. Since IVF treatments entered the news earlier this year, Walz has been repeatedly claiming he… pic.twitter.com/hHdfSsiGaI

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 20, 2024

And here he is two weeks ago when Harris announced him as her VP pick in a video the Associated Press labeled "Tim Walz shares his family’s personal history with IVF." He never actually says IVF in this one but that's clearly the implication.

And here's another one from July in which Walz uses his IVF cred to attack JD Vance.

Gov. @Tim_Walz: If it was up to JD Vance, I wouldn't have a family because of IVF. Democrats are investing in prenatal care. We're the ones that are for universal pre-K. We're the ones that are providing school meals. I'm not gonna back down one bit on this whole family values… pic.twitter.com/jdbKmpuh4K

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 9, 2024

There's more of this but you get the idea. Walz repeatedly uses what you might call his lived experience with IVF to bolster his biography (it's part of his stump speech) and to attack his opponents.

Except, Walz and his wife never used IVF. They used a different procedure, one that does not involve the fertilization of embryos outside the body. It's an important distinction because a) that's literally what IVF means (in vitro means in glass) and b) no one opposed the treatment the Walz's actually used. Walz's wife clarified all of this yesterday.

Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz clarified in a statement to CNN that she did not use in vitro fertilization to conceive, sharing new details about her and Gov. Tim Walz’s fertility struggles as the governor has highlighted their experience with infertility on the campaign trail.

In her statement, Gwen Walz said they used a different fertility treatment, intrauterine insemination...

Intrauterine insemination, like IVF, is a common fertility procedure used by couples trying to conceive. But anti-abortion groups have pushed state officials to restrict IVF —  when an egg is removed from a person’s body and combined with sperm inside a lab before being implanted.

During intrauterine insemination, known as IUI, sperm is placed directly in the uterus. The process is sometimes combined with ovulation induction, where medication stimulates the release of eggs. People experiencing infertility often start with IUI and move on to IVF if needed.

The NY Times does its best to cover for Walz by saying "many have assumed" Walz was talking about IVF, which is a nice way of saying Walz lied and we all fell for it.

Many have assumed that his family relied on I.V.F. to conceive their two children. Several news outlets, including The New York Times, The Associated Press and The Minnesota Star Tribune, have reported that the family relied on in vitro fertilization. Fertility advocates concluded as much after hearing Mr. Walz talk. In April, the Tim Walz for Governor campaign office mailed out a fund-raising letter in an envelope that read: “My wife and I used I.V.F. to start a family.’’

But when asked if the Walzes wanted to share more details about their effort to conceive, the Harris-Walz campaign recently clarified that the couple did not rely on I.V.F. but rather another common fertility procedure called intrauterine insemination, or I.U.I.

The treatments have a key distinction: Unlike I.V.F., I.U.I. does not involve creating or discarding embryos. And so anti-abortion leaders are not trying to restrict the treatment.

To sum this up, Walz wanted people to believe he and his wife used IVF. He and his campaign said so directly a few times but he also often just said something more generic like "fertility treatments." They wanted people to believe that meant IVF because IVF was a political hot topic. But once called on to give details, the campaign was forced to send out Walz' wife to admit they'd never used IVF at all. 

The shorter version is that they got caught lying, just as they've been caught lying about other parts of Walz' biography. It makes you wonder what else he's still lying about.