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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz referred to ladders as part of his criticism of former President Donald Trump’s advocacy of a border wall to fight illegal immigration.

Walz was interviewed on CNN a week before Kamala Harris chose him as her vice presidential running mate.

Walz said Trump “talks about this wall. I always say, let me know how high it is. If it’s 25 feet, then I’ll invest in the 30-foot ladder factory. That’s not how you stop this. You stop this using electronics. You stop it using more border control agents and you stop it by having a legal system that allows for that tradition of allowing folks to come here, just like my relatives did.”

The Wisconsin Republican Party claimed Aug. 6 that Walz suggested in the interview that he wanted to provide ladders to migrants trying to illegally enter the U.S.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Leigh Tauss: Gov Tim Walz ready to take on Trump after ‘20 years in the classroom’

Wisconsin Republican Party: WisGOP Statement on Harris’ VP Choice

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Tom Kertscher joined Wisconsin Watch as a full-time Milwaukee-based reporter in October 2024 after starting as a freelance Fact Briefs reporter in January 2023. In addition to contributing to Wisconsin Watch’s collaboration with The Gigafact Project to combat online misinformation, he reports on Wisconsin policy, labor, energy and the rapid expansion of data centers across the state. Kertscher is a former longtime reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and the author of two sports books, on Al McGuire and Brett Favre.