First the lie. During a Saturday campaign speech in Minnesota Trump said, “Every voter in Minnesota needs to know that when the violent mobs of anarchists and looters and Marxists came to burn down Minneapolis four years ago — remember me? I couldn’t get your governor to act. He’s supposed to call in the National Guard or the Army. And he didn’t do it. I couldn’t get your governor. So I sent in the National Guard to save Minneapolis.”

Then the facts (which were fact-checked by CNN and others repeatedly back then):

Trump’s claims that he sent the National Guard to Minneapolis in 2020 and that Walz refused to do so are both wrong. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, not Trump, sent the National Guard to Minneapolis — and Walz first deployed the Guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself.

The Minnesota National Guard, the entity that Walz deployed, is under the command of the governor, not the president. The president has the power to federalize states’ Guard troops under certain circumstances, but Trump never did so during the 2020 unrest in Minnesota.

Public evidence confirms that Walz, who served in the Army National Guard from 1981 to 2005, deployed the Guard himself in May 2020.

After Trump began telling this false story in June 2020, Walz spokesperson Teddy Tschann provided a statement to CNN in the form of a question-and-answer sheet. It said, among other things: “Did President Trump ‘call out’ the Guard? No.” “Did Gov. Walz call out the Guard? Yes.” “Did Gov. Walz call out the National Guard at the direction of the President? No. He activated the Minnesota National Guard at the request of the Mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, before he talked to the White House.”

Tim Walz is one of the people being considered by Kamala Harris as a VP running mate this year. That’s probably prompted Trump to lie as much as possible about him.