Body language expert tells Dr. Phil he saw 'panic' on Walz's face during key debate moment

Body language expert Scott Rouse called out Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., for panicking and trying to avoid answering a question about his presence at Tiananmen Square during the vice presidential debate Tuesday.

One of the debate’s most surprising moments came when the CBS debate moderators confronted the governor about his claim that he had been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests, when he actually traveled to Asia in August 1989, a few months later. 

Dr. Phil, who previously asked Rouse to analyze body language in September’s presidential debate, asked him what to look for when reviewing this clip of Walz.

"I'm going to look for the things that tell us we know he wasn't there, and this, I'll put all my money on this, we're going to see fear, we're going to see panic, we're going to see shame, and the grief muscle as well," he said, adding, "Everything’s in this one."

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The host then showed CBS' Margaret Brennan confronting Walz about the Tiananmen claim, noting that reports indicate "you actually didn’t travel to Asia until August of that year, can you explain that discrepancy?"

Walz began his response by talking about growing up in rural Nebraska. Rouse said his body language spoke volumes, "As that head goes sideways, that's panic. Because he's not sure how he's going to defend this. He knows the question's coming, so he's got something ready, but it's not coming out the way he thought about it, so he's got inner dialogue going on, he's thinking about it. That’s why I see that head turn, those eyes get really, really wide. I know what that looks like, that’s what’s happening."

Rouse noted what he called the upside-down horseshoe shape of the "grief muscle" as well as other signs on Walz’s face.

"And the rest of this, this is panic, we see his eyes doing this, that's panic," Rouse said, drawing on the screen. He added further that Walz's lower face and head indicated he was in "panic mode."

He then called attention to what he said was Walz's biggest hand gesture of the night, "This is the one that’s come out further from his body than anything else, because he's trying to make sure- ‘I want you to believe me! You gotta believe me!’ That’s what we’re seeing, the panic here. Wide eyes, grief muscle, and everything’s far out."

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Dr. Phil said a quick and direct answer followed by an explanation immediately seems more trustworthy than starting an answer with a long explanation.

"Don't you want to hear the answer up front?" Dr. Phil asked the audience. "And the question was, ‘You said you were in Tiananmen Square during that showdown. And were you or weren't you?’" He then mocked Walz’s answer about growing up in a small Nebraska town.

Rouse replied that this tactic of dumping unrelated information is a well-known ploy to change the conversation. 

"We call that ‘chaff and redirect,’" the expert said. "He gives out a lot more information, hoping that your brain will follow that information and not ask any more questions and forget what you're talking about. That's why when you're asking a question, they go, ‘Well, listen, here's what really happened. When I get up in the morning, I eat toast every day’ and they start talking about stuff that has nothing to do with what the answer is."

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Dr. Phil then proposed a way Walz could have better answered the question.

"Would it have been better off if he’d have said, ‘No, I wasn't, and I said I was. Let me explain. I took student groups over there probably 30 or 40 times, 35 years ago. And I remember this being a really big deal, and I just got it confused timing wise. Bad mistake on my part. I apologize. Next question.’" 

Dr. Phil then joked, "But then we wouldn't have known where he was born."