While providing personal background context, Walz's long-winded tangents about his upbringing, career, and reasons for student trips constitute a series of red herring fallacies that avoid validly answering the core question posed about the discrepancy in his statements.

1. red herring • Walz's response to the question posed to him appears to be a series of red herrings.

Some examples of the multiple red herrings Walz employs include: ​

1. Talking about growing up in a small town of 400 people ​
2. Mentioning joining the National Guard at 17 ​
3. Working on family farms ​
4. Using the GI Bill to become a teacher ​
5. The purposes of taking students on trips to China

Each of these personal anecdotes and tangents constitutes its own red herring - a separate attempt to divert away from directly answering the question about the discrepancy in his China trip timing.

So rather than just one overarching red herring, Walz's long-winded response is littered with a succession of red herring fallacies, constantly veering into irrelevant biographical stories instead of addressing the core issue raised. It's a compounded string of red herring diversions.