The attacks against Tim Walz started about five seconds after Harris picked him as her VP and for good reason.
Walz has a very spotty record, including claims he made about his military career and the GOP plans to exploit it.
Talking Points…
- Walz blasted for military career claims
- Media coverup begins
- Analysis
In Walz's bio, he claims that he retired as a Command Master Sergeant (E-9), but that is inaccurate. Walz was given that rank conditionally, but he never fulfilled the terms, and the rank was revoked, returning him to a Sergeant Major (E-8).
Walz and Democrats have been attacking Vance left and right, so Vance brought up the issue this week after defending himself against a Walz attack. Vance, who served in the Marines as a combat journalist, stated:
"As a Marine who served his country in uniform when the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably.
"When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him, a fact that he's been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with."
In addition to Vance's attack, two service members who served with Walz came forward to confirm that Walz was not retired as a Command Master Sergeant, stating that he quit the reserves when his unit was going to be deployed to Iraq, more or less calling him a coward. This set up a flurry of activity by the media and Democrats to defend Walz against the accusations.
To make matters worse for Walz, he made a local appearance that made it sound like he had been to war, but that was never the case. Even though he served for more than two decades in the National Guard, he was never in a war zone. Yet, this was what he told supporters…
Gov. @Tim_Walz: I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war,… pic.twitter.com/3IVaXi2RP2
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 6, 2024
Ironically, that very video is what the Harris campaign used to defend Walz in saying that he never said he went to war. But when you say you "carried in war," that means you were in a war zone. CNN correspondent Tom Foreman fact-checked Walz on this, stating:
"Walz did make a comment speaking to a group, he's done it a couple of times, where he has used language that has suggested that he carried weapons in a fighting situation.
"As you know, with your contact with the military, I know from coming from a military family, there is a difference between being in a combat area, being involved at a time of war and actually being in a position where people are shooting at you. There is no evidence that at any time Governor Walz was in a position of being shot at, and some of his language could easily be seen to suggest that he was."
ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang then came to his defense, saying that Walz "has never claimed to have seen active combat, despite those comments that he carried a gun in war." White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was next, stating:
"I think when I was answering your colleague['s] question earlier about Gov. Walz, I laid out and you've all seen his bio, right? This is someone who enlisted at 17 years old to serve this country, he was part of the Army National Guard for 24 years.
"This is someone who [was] a high school teacher, a high school coach as well, who grew up in a small town in the Midwest. And so I think his bio speaks for itself, who he is speaks for itself, his record speaks for itself, and I'm just not going to say anything beyond that."
This is going to be a problem for Walz as we move forward because he will likely have to debate JD Vance at some point, and you better believe this will be brought up. The fact that Walz was hinting that he had been in a war zone only to find out he quit rather than be deployed is pretty despicable. He will use the excuse that he was running for office, but I doubt the American people will buy that excuse. When you factor in the scathing rebuke by Retired Command Sergeants Major Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr, two veterans who say they served in Walz's battalion, who literally accused Walz of "betraying his country," the Harris campaign has a significant problem on its hands.
