Newsweek, August 2024
Republican attacks on Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice president, do not appear to be working, according to polling and experts. Donald Trump’s campaign responded to Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement of Walz as her running mate last week by attacking his military record. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has led the charge, accusing Walz of “stolen valor” and of abandoning his unit before it was deployed to Iraq to pursue a campaign for Congress. Vance also seized on footage from 2018 that was shared by the Harris campaign where Walz, while speaking about gun control reform, said: “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.”
“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?” Vance said in Michigan on Wednesday. “What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq, and he has not spent a day in a combat zone.” Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard, but he was never in a combat zone. The Harris-Walz campaign has said that Walz “misspoke” in the 2018 video. Walz’s congressional campaign in March 2005 issued a statement saying he planned to run despite the possible mobilization of National Guard soldiers to Iraq, the Associated Press reported. He retired from service at the age of 41 in May of that year, and the mobilization order for Walz’s unit was issued in August 2005.
