Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is getting pummeled over the fact that he avoided military service and misled the country about his veteran status, and it’s likely not something that’s going away.
Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), was one of those who called Walz out about it after a reporter asked him about Walz’s portrayal of Vance as an elitist with an Ivy League education.
“I came from a family where nobody in my family had ever gone to law school. I grew up in a poor family. The fact that Tim Walz wants to turn it into a bad thing, that I actually worked myself through college, through law school and made something myself — to me, that’s the American dream. And if Tim Walz wants to insult it, I think that’s frankly pretty bizarre,” Vance said. “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.”
He added, “I think it’s shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to make a promise that you’re going to follow through, and then to drop out right before you actually have to go.”
However, the problem for the Harris-Walz ticket isn’t that J.D. Vance destroyed Walz’s stolen valor. It’s the fact that the liberal media is calling him out for it, too.
For instance, Newsweek reported on Wednesday that the Minnesota National Guard is disputing Governor Tim Walz’s military biography. They reported that despite the governor’s assertions, Walz did not retire with the rank of command sergeant major.
Army Lieutenant Colonel Kristen Augé, the state public affairs officer for Minnesota National Guard, told Just the News on Wednesday that the governor did not retire as “Command Sergeant Major Walz” in 2005, as stated on Minnesota’s official website, but as master sergeant “because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy.” A soldier who does not complete the requisite coursework is automatically demoted, according to Army regulations.
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It is not the first time that Walz has faced scrutiny over his military background.
When he first ran for governor in 2018, two retired senior officials with the Minnesota National Guard wrote an open letter criticizing Walz for retiring shortly before his battalion was to set for an active-duty deployment in Iraq, quitting months after they were ordered to mobilize and “leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging.”
“He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘Screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice president,” Thomas Behrends, one of the retired officials who signed the letter, told the New York Post on Tuesday.
Even CNN called out Walz. CNN correspondent Tom Foreman fact-checked the governor on the air on Wednesday.
“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,” Foreman began. “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.”
Recommended: MSNBC Data Guru Has Bad News for Democrats About Walz
Foreman continued, “So that is absolutely false when he said that about gun rights out there. The campaign has essentially come forward to say, ‘Look, he had a long career, he would never want to purposely mislead people about this.’ It’s what campaigns tend to say. And I’m sure we haven’t heard the end of this, but it’s an interesting argument that brings to mind past conflicts we’ve had in politics where military people start going at each other. Then you start saying, ‘Well, what is the basis from this, how much of it is true and what are we to draw from that as voters.'”
CNN Reporter Delivers Devastating Fact Check On Walz’s Claim That He ‘Carried Weapons In A Fighting Situation’ pic.twitter.com/YXQghYf1LZ
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 7, 2024
If the liberal media is willing to call out Walz over this, the Harris-Walz campaign is in big trouble.
Will Walz make it to the convention?
