For at least a week, conservative outlets have been sounding the alarm on Tim Walz repeatedly stealing valor over the last two decades. The former member of the Minnesota National Guard spent years either directly saying or insinuating that he deployed to a war zone. In one video, he claimed to have carried weapons “in war.” In another instance, he misstated his rank in a campaign release, obscuring the fact that he was demoted upon retirement.
SEE: Tim Walz Goes Full Metal Stolen Valor With Anti-Gun Rant
Those are hardly the only examples, though. During a protest against George W. Bush, Walz held up a sign claiming to be a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, which took place in Afghanistan. In an article published in The Atlantic, Walz is recounted as telling a then-staffer for the former president that he had just returned from “fighting the global war on terror.”
I could keep going, and that’s to say nothing of the others, including Nancy Pelosi, who claimed Walz served on a “battlefield.” Throughout numerous false mentions, the Minnesota governor never offered any corrections. When a combat veteran confronted Walz’s office about the issue in 2009, nothing came of it.
Never mind that Walz has also repeatedly lied about his retirement rank.
2009. Congressman Tim Walz sends a farewell message to some soldiers actually deploying to Iraq.
In the message, Walz claims that he is a “retired Command Sergeant Major.”
Lying about one’s rank in a farewell message to soldiers deploying is about as dishonorable as it gets. pic.twitter.com/f7AIqPK8ky
— MAZE (@mazemoore) August 8, 2024
In short, this is a pretty big scandal, and on Friday, it finally got big enough that the Kamala Harris campaign couldn’t ignore it anymore. In an obvious attempt to tamp down the building fire, an unnamed spokesperson came out to claim Walz had simply “misspoke” regarding the video in which he claimed to have carried weapons “in war.”
A senior Harris-Walz campaign spokesman tells me Tim Walz “misspoke” when he talked about “weapons of war that I carried in war” in 2018.
Walz served in the Army National Guard for 24 years. He trained with “weapons of war” but he never deployed in a war zone. pic.twitter.com/nM3a9phLJH
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) August 10, 2024
I’ve already written on the statement itself, which is severely lacking and dripping with arrogance, but what I want to point out above is who is reporting on that statement. Jonathan Karl works for ABC News. He is the “Chief Washington Correspondent,” which means he is the big dog when it comes to presidential politics.
How many times did Karl mention the video of Walz stealing valor prior to that statement from the Harris campaign? The answer is zero, and his outlet only mentioned it once as part of a “fact-check” pushing back on statements made by JD Vance. They never reported on the video of Walz lying about carrying weapons in war as a story in and of itself. Only when Karl had a statement in hand from some unnamed spokesperson did he even bother to acknowledge the story exists.
That’s not by accident. That is how the press operates, and it’s their primary means of bias. Believe it or not, editorial standards do exist at mainstream press outlets. That means you aren’t often going to see an outlet print an outright lie. Instead, they hide their bias in malleable language surrounding reported events. Moreso, though, they hide their bias in obfuscation. What they don’t report is just as important as what they do.
Karl and every other mainstream press outlet had a chance to do their jobs and report on that video of Walz lying about his service as a standalone story. Instead, they ignored it until the excuse for it was given to them. They are nothing but stenographers. A real journalist would have immediately asked that spokesperson about the dozen or so other examples of stolen valor floating around. Instead, Karl just pushed the message out as if he’s on the Harris campaign payroll.
That’s what Republicans are up against this cycle, and it’s a formidable challenge. That brief few weeks when the press was honest about Joe Biden’s mental condition was just a cynical ploy to get him off the ticket. Now that he’s off the ticket, it’s back to business as usual.
