As RedState reported, newly-minted vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is facing a growing scandal surrounding his military service. While Walz did serve in the Minnesota National Guard, it has come to light that he bailed on his unit in the face of being deployed to Iraq, receiving a demotion in the process.
READ: A Tale of Two Veterans, What the Service of Walz and Vance Tell Us About the Men
Walz’s moment of truth came when his unit was ordered to deploy to Iraq. As Matt Funicello details, Walz had his enlistment cut short by asking for an early retirement. In the process, he violated his pledge to complete a training course and was administratively reduced to one rank.
Where Vance was the ultimate volunteer, choosing a service he knew would result in deployment to Iraq, Walz approached his enlistment to get benefits and improve his chances for professional advancement. When Vance was ordered to Iraq, he went. When Walz, the senior noncommissioned officer in his battalion, was ordered to Iraq, he quit and left his men high and dry.
Men who served with Walz are already coming forward to express their discontent with his decision to skip out on the deployment. Here’s just one example.
Here I am on our Iraq deployment with the Minnesota Army National Guard, the very same deployment @Tim_Walz bailed on. https://t.co/FNEhq3FHFM pic.twitter.com/unfNptN2Oi
— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) August 7, 2024
While Walz’s sudden decision to leave his men high and dry so he could go pursue a political career was bad enough, I wouldn’t have described it as a scandal. That developed later when a video of the Minnesota governor emerged showing him stealing valor by claiming to have gone to war. Ironically, it was posted by the official Kamala Harris campaign account on social media.
SEE: Tim Walz Goes Full-Metal Stolen Valor in Anti-Gun Rant
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
WALZ: I’ll take my kick in the butt from the NRA. I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. And I gave the money back. And I’ll tell you what I have been doing. 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, are only carried in war.
The immediate response from Harris-Walz supporters was to claim that was just a slip of the tongue. According to them, he was speaking off the cuff and was simply trying to refer to his general military service, not necessarily claiming to have gone to war (despite him saying just that).
Perhaps that excuse may have flown if that was the end of it. That’s not the end of it, though. A bombshell report from Jordan Schachtel dropped on Wednesday afternoon has blown this scandal wide open.
Wow, this is wild. (Also OEF was Afghanistan, NOT Iraq.)
Walz should be forced to confirm or deny whether he misled Bloomberg’s @JoshuaGreen, who is still reporting to this day that Walz did a tour in Iraq.
And Green should come out and say whether he was misled.
This is false… https://t.co/CmDrwyJBxR pic.twitter.com/30MpUhpCut
— Geoffrey Ingersoll (@GPIngersoll) August 7, 2024
Green discusses a 2004 visit from former President George W. Bush to Gov. Walz’s hometown, in which a protesting Walz (who was still serving in the military) told the reporter about him supposedly demanding to speak to the then commander in chief.
“Walz thought for a moment and asked the Bush staffers if they really wanted to arrest a command sergeant major who’d just returned from fighting the war on terrorism,” Green writes.
As Schatchel notes in his piece, the first mention of Walz going to Iraq could have just been Joshua Green, the reporter who did the profile, making an assumption. That would be unusual given the editorial standards at play at such an outlet, but it is at least possible that Walz himself didn’t tell Green that he served in Iraq.
That second mention, though? That one isn’t explained away by assuming an overzealous reporter just got out over his skis. Green is clearly describing what Walz told him regarding his supposed denial of entry to a George W. Bush rally in 2004 (that claim also appears to be largely made up, but that’s another story). There is no other logical explanation.
Further, Green, who now works for Bloomberg is still under the impression that Walz served in Iraq, making the same claim on the day the governor was made Harris’ running mate. Again, the way this reads doesn’t seem like a professional reporter just making an assumption. Green appears to have been told this by Walz himself.
To this day, Green remains under the false impression that Walz served and fought in the war. In a piece for Bloomberg on Tuesday, he wrote that Walz served “in Iraq as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.”
In marketing Walz as a veteran upstart politician, he created a false construct that involved heroism in the war in terror, when in reality, Tim Walz never fought in a war or anywhere near a war.
This scandal isn’t going away, and from what I’m hearing, this is just the beginning of the revelations regarding Walz’s career. I don’t know if the Harris campaign didn’t bother to vet him or if they were just this arrogant, but there’s a lot more to come.
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