Oh, come on. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, lived down to the worst caricature of him in his remarks at the Center for American Progress today, weighing in on the Israeli airstrikes against Iran, and concluding that only the People’s Republic of China has the “moral authority” to negotiate an agreement in the Middle East.

Here we are, with the Middle East back on fire in a way that has now expanded. With, I don’t — Iran has to retaliate, in their mind, I’m sure. And now, who is the voice in the world that can negotiate some type of agreement in this? Who holds the moral authority? Who holds the ability to do that? Because we are not seen as a neutral actor. And we maybe never were, I don’t want to tell anybody that. I think there’s a lot of people who would say ‘you always lean one way in this.’ But I think there was at least an attempt to be somewhat of the arbitrator in this. We saw President Carter do it with Begin and Sadat. We’ve had certain wins along the way that were actually mutually beneficial both ways. Now I ask, who that is. And consistently, over and over again, we’re going to have to face the reality of it might be the Chinese. And, and, that goes against everything they say they’re trying to do in terms of the balance of powers. I would just have to say, my heart goes out for this. Ukraine continues to go on. Gaza continues to be a humanitarian disaster, and now it’s expanded even further.

Lest you doubt that I am accurately transcribing Walz’s remarks, he begins this portion of his comments at 30:50 in the video below.

Now, a lot of people will look back to Walz’s extensive and longstanding ties to China — at least 30 visits, one funded by the Chinese government, status as a visiting fellow at the Macao Polytechnic University, a Chinese state-run institution of higher education, etc. — and conclude that he’s a “Manchurian candidate,” somehow brainwashed by the Chinese government to repeat their talking points and propaganda to American citizens I think that accusation is nonsense; if the Chinese government had brainwashed him, surely they would have programmed to not look like a deer in headlights during a vice-presidential debate. (Note that Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s new book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House reveals that in the weeks leading up to the debate, Walz was so nervous that he couldn’t sleep at night and his aides had to remind him to eat.)

The regime in Beijing has a lot of things — a growing army and navy, a campaign of genocide against the Uyghurs, far-reaching influence campaigns, a TikTok propaganda system that was supposed to be banned, leaky virus research labs —  but moral authority is not one of them.

How on God’s green earth could Walz possibly think that the Chinese would be good faith negotiators in anything, much less in Middle East conflicts?