In the same breath that they say these tanks were on their way to/from smushing all the protesters to pulp and washing it all down the drain (my mom actually told me this)
Of course then you ask why tf this guy got away, they don't believe he did, you show them this, and it's either fake or they couldn't kill him because the media was watching this location. Insanity.
There's never been any actual evidence of that though has there. As far as I know no one ever credibly came forward and said 'I was tank man' or 'my husband / partner / son was tank man's etc. This always seems like speculation based on nothing when I hear it repeated.
The most probable explanation is that he just went back to doing whatever he did normally and nobody even bothered to seek him out because everyone had much more problems that day.
But this version never seems to occur to the liberals, despite their (ostensible) adherence of common sense, occam's razor and so on.
In school the teacher showed us the video and then stopped it right when the tank stops in front of him. The teacher then said 'this was the only footage to escape the oppressive communist Chinese government'.
I remember the tank man photograph in school text books and posters and boomer memes. Finding out a video exists is like the political version of finding out Santa Clause isn't real.
If you go to some of the uploads of it on Youtube, the comments are filled with people experiencing the mandela effect like "Whaaaaaa?? I could have sworn I saw this decades ago and he died? Is this edited??"
Turns out that repeating a lie often enough really does make it true
Liberals will look at this and still think muh 1984 jorjor well totalitarian China carried out a massacre during the June 4th protests. Just look at the comments on the video.