Some of you might have heard this. This is very personal for my wife and I. When Gwen and I decided to have children, we went through years of fertility treatments, and I remember each night praying that the call was going to come and it was going to be good news. The phone would ring, tenseness in my stomach. [00:00:17] And then the agony when you heard the treatments hadn't worked. So it wasn't by chance that when we welcomed our first child, our beautiful daughter, we named her Hope. [00:00:33] Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has been very vulnerable, publicly very candid and open about the difficulties that he and his wife had in conceiving their children. He talks about the fertility treatments that they needed in order to conceive. [00:00:51] But now new reporting indicates that he might not have been telling the truth. And it has to do with the type of fertility treatments that he and his wife relied on. And as a result, Republicans are now using this, of course, to attack him. [00:01:07] Hey, don't scroll away. Come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to TYT. You power our honest reporting. You do it at tyt.com/team and we love you for it. So before we get to the Trump ticket and Republican supporters and how they're [00:01:25] attacking walls, let's actually back up a little bit and give you the context. So during an interview with CNN, the first lady of Minnesota, Gwen Walz, who of course, is Governor Walz wife, revealed that she underwent a different fertility treatment, not IVF, [00:01:43] called intrauterine insemination. And so intrauterine insemination, like IVF, is a common fertility procedure that's used by couples who are trying to get pregnant. But it's a different method entirely. Okay, so during intrauterine insemination known as IUI. [00:02:01] Sperm is placed directly in the uterus. The process is sometimes combined with ovulation induction when or where medication stimulates the release of eggs. People experiencing infertility often start with IUI and then move on to IVF if needed. [00:02:18] Now, in her statement to CNN, Gwen Walz described the process as an incredibly personal and difficult experience and then said this the only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next door neighbor. [00:02:33] She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed. As part of the IUI process, I'd rush home from school and she would give me the shots to ensure that we stayed on track. And then she went on to explain that she and Walz only started publicly sharing [00:02:49] their fertility treatments after Alabama's decision in regard to IVF treatments. They see the embryos that are used at IVF treatments as sacrilege because they consider those embryos like the same as a viable. [00:03:04] Human being, which I think is crazy. Gwen Wahl says in regard to that, after seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country, particularly the efforts in Alabama that jeopardized access to fertility treatments, Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience, [00:03:21] but their experience didn't have anything to do with IVF, obviously, and I don't think that the right wing is going after intrauterine insemination, because that is it's about it's not about putting an embryo, [00:03:37] a fertilized egg, into the woman's body. It's about having her ovulate and ensuring that the sperm gets to her egg. If that makes any sense. Yeah. So genuine question when he explained how many different times they tried, etc., [00:03:54] was that part of the story as far as we can tell? True. Well, why don't we take a look at this compilation of Governor Walz talking about this issue, and you'll see for yourself. JB Vance knows nothing about that. And then he keeps going into all of these things. Today's IVF day. [00:04:10] Thank God for IVF. My wife and I have two beautiful children. He thinks he needs to dictate that. And I've been saying this the golden rule that makes small towns work so we're not at each other's throats all the time in a little town is, mind your own damn business. That includes IVF, and this gets personal for me and my family. [00:04:30] When my wife and I decided to have children, we spent years going through infertility treatments, and I remember praying every night for a call for good news. The pit in my stomach when the phone rang, and the agony when we heard that the treatments hadn't worked. Yeah, first of all, it was up to him. [00:04:45] I wouldn't have a family because of IVF and the things that we need to do. Reproductive. My kids were born through that direct, you know, that way. And also I make sure that I'm the guys and our folks are investing in prenatal care. We're the ones that are there for universal pre-K were the ones that are providing school meals at this. [00:05:01] I'm not going to back down one bit on this whole family values thing, and it's us. So look, obviously I agree with Walz and the Democratic Party in wanting to protect IVF. And by the way, IVF treatments are also incredibly popular with Republican voters. [00:05:17] They want to protect those treatments as well. But obviously, campaigning on this issue as though he and his wife relied on that treatment. And then it turns out that that's not the treatment that they relied on, is something that's now going to be attacked or Republicans are going to use [00:05:35] to attack Walz. I don't know how much it's going to hurt the ticket, but he should have been careful and he wasn't. Yeah, I'm 50 over 50 on this one. So, on the one hand, yeah, don't say IVF if it was IUI and and there [00:05:53] is a real difference because there actually as Anna pointed out, they're actually opposed to IVF because of the way that it's done, and they probably are not opposed to IUI. But the reason why I say I'm 5050 is because what I always do is I look at this, and in any given issue like this, [00:06:10] how would I react if it was on the shoe was on the other foot and a Republican made this kind of mistake lie, whatever you want to call it, right? And I would think, is it material like is am I outraged by this? And I don't think it's that material. [00:06:27] And so and maybe I'm biased and we could talk it through, but the reason why I don't think it's material is to me, the most important part was, wait, did he make up that story about infertility treatment and the years they went through and the struggle, etc.? Because if he did though, then I'm worried about it. [00:06:44] That's a significant lie, right? But if it turns out, yeah, they were doing infertility treatment and all that is true, it was just a different infertility treatment. And he was kind of saying it because people know IVF and they don't know IUI II as much. Yeah, it still shouldn't have done it. No question. [00:07:00] Yeah, but a lot less severe. Okay. Like, I'm not overly worried about it. I'm going to speculate on something, and I know it's not going to come across as overly kind to walls or men in general. Sorry. But I think there's some chance that walls genuinely didn't know [00:07:18] the details of the treatment. - Well, that's more embarrassing. - Yeah, but it's true, right? Like, I just feel like, I don't know. I just feel like men aren't, like, super involved in, like, the specific details of, like, what the fertility treatment is. [00:07:34] They just know that a fertility treatment is happening, and they're trying to see if the pregnancy will happen as a result of that treatment. Obviously, like because here's the thing, his wife is obviously in the know about the campaigning. And so she wouldn't like blow. [00:07:50] Like she wouldn't blow his cover like that. You get what I'm saying? Like in an interview. - Yeah. - So So, look, it's super hard to tell. I hear you, that might be the case. We don't know. We're speculating on why. Right? - Total speculation. - Yeah. On why he said it wrong. But look, number one, it's super important not to be like the Republicans [00:08:10] and not to be bad faith actors. So just call him out for being wrong. Yeah. Okay. And so and then when I look at it as like is it material. And it would be material in 1 or 2 ways. One is it genuinely affects a policy that I care about [00:08:25] and is important to the public. In this case, no, he's in favor of all fertility treatments, including IVF, and I'm in favor of that. It doesn't affect policy at all. In fact, I think that this whole story, including the attack on walls, does one thing and one thing only remind everyone that there is some faction [00:08:44] within the Republican Party that wants to do away with IVF, and J.D. Vance happens to be one of them. Totally. Right? There is one fact pattern which would be really problematic for Tim Waltz Yeah, as if I sense that he is inauthentic. Yeah, exactly. I agree. [00:08:59] - Right I. Agree. - So that's not a policy thing. But that would be a little bit heartbreaking because we're hopeful that he's one of like a very literally a handful of politicians. I don't know if it's past 3 or 4 in my lifetime that is honest and authentic. [00:09:15] And if it turns out it's a little bit of an act, then that would be both heartbreaking. But again, I'm not naive. - Yeah. - It's heartbreaking. Yeah, I would say. All right. Well another one. No. But what I mean by heartbreaking in the relevant part of that is, well, that means maybe he's not going to get things done. [00:09:32] And so that that affects how I view the chances of them passing those bills on a national level. But again, the fact that he already passed them in Minnesota is overwhelming evidence that he is not full of crap. - Yeah I agree. - And hence. Okay, so I've been talking about the attacks on Walz over this, and I [00:09:48] haven't even given you the attacks yet, so I just want to quickly do that. So JD Vance tweeted about it, saying today it came out that Tim Walz had lied about having a family via IVF who lies about something like that. And then Vance further elaborated that when he was elaborated on this, [00:10:05] when he was stopped by reporters in Wisconsin yesterday. So let's take a look at that. You have attacked him for not being clear about his military record. Do you think this is becoming a pattern of him using ambiguous language, either through commission or omission when talking about, you know, his record? [00:10:21] Yeah, I do that. I mean, look, I saw that this morning, and it's just such a bizarre thing to lie about, right? There's nothing wrong with having a baby through IVF or not having a baby through IVF. Like, why lie about it? I just don't understand that. And having, you know, had people who, you know, friends of mine who used IUI [00:10:38] and then some of them worked out and some of them didn't, and then some of the people who didn't work out, they then used IVF. Like, you know the difference, right? Anybody who's had a friend or themselves gone through fertility treatments, you know the difference. So why lie about it? I just don't understand it. My basic read on Tim Walz and I don't know the guy but my basic read, [00:10:55] if you look at his military record, the lies about the rank, the lies about serving in combat, the lies now about IVF. Even lying about like, his food preferences. My read on him is that he's a guy who likes to just barely cross the line. [00:11:12] The 2004 esque attacks on Tim Walz over his military record. I haven't commented on it publicly like you got to do better than that, JD Vance. But you know this issue. I don't know how much of an impact it's going to have, but I lean in your direction, Jake. [00:11:28] It's not really material, and if anything, it does remind everyone that there is a group of Republicans who want to do away with the fertility treatment, IVF, that people desperately rely on when they want to conceive and they want to have children. And then finally, I also need to note that the president and CEO of resolve, that's [00:11:46] the National Infertility Association, stated that the group regrets elevating suggestions That walls used IVF, so they kind of took what he said at face value and they promoted it. And so Barbara Collura, who's the president of this organization, [00:12:03] said the following resolve regrets if our organization contributed to any confusion about how he became a parent. We support all paths to parenthood and have welcomed Governor Walz's support for our community and our advocacy issues since the Federal Advocacy Day in 2017, [00:12:21] during his tenure in Congress. Okay. I have one last comment here. If I heard him right, J.D. Vance said, you know, he he has a habit of going barely past the line. Right. That's actually a really fair thing to say, right? Because I think that is what Tim Walz is doing. [00:12:38] But he is going barely past the line. And, you know, when you add up a couple of these things and most of them are unfair, especially when they make a federal case out of it. But there are a couple of things that are fair, including saying, hey, it wasn't IVF, it was our UI, right? [00:12:55] I get the sense that Tim Walz, in order to tell a good story, is the kind of guy who embellishes around the edges, and so look out for that. That'll probably happen a couple more times, because if you're the story embellisher guy, you you do that on a fairly consistent basis. [00:13:13] So it's not lethal. Being a phony and lying regularly and lying egregiously is lethal, like politically. And so so so far, not too bad. But I am a little bit on the lookout for the embellishments now. [00:13:28] Yeah, 100%. And that's okay. I think that's important to look out for. Look, I'm literally wearing a balls to the wall shirt shop to you. Com. Nevertheless, I'm fair about it. Fair has shown America. How many times are you going to do this on the show today? To be fair, probably 20 or 30 times. [00:13:46] Then followed up with shop target.com and the link is in the description box. Okay. I don't know, maybe 40. I'll see what happens. - I'll try to prepare. - Myself mentally for that.