Does Tim Walz Have a Stolen Valor Problem?

No sooner than Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential choice than armies of citizen journalists began pouring over Walz’s background.

What they’re finding is loads and loads of paydirt when it comes to Walz’s various claims about his level of military service.

Ironically, it was Walz who opened this line of attack on himself by questioning and attacking the background and service of JD Vance during a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

As the New York Post reports, Walz was prone to say he carried certain weapons “in war” indicating he served somewhere in harm’s way which was never true:

Tim Walz falsely claimed that he carried weapons “in war” in a resurfaced clip that JD Vance blasted this week as another example of the Minnesota governor using “stolen valor.”

Kamala Harris’ running mate made the remarks in a resurfaced 2018 clip shared by his gubernatorial campaign on social media, in which he counsels a crowded room about gun violence.

“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,” Walz, 60, can be heard saying.

Critics were quick to point out that Walz, who retired from the National Guard in 2005, never actually served in a combat zone.

CNN, of all places, even started discussing Walz’s claims on air pointing out the mischaracterization of his service on multiple occasions:

CNN on Governor Tim Walz:

“Walz did make a comment, he’s done it a couple times, where he has used language that suggested that he carried weapons in a fighting situation. There is no evidence that any time that he was in the position of being shot at and some of his language… pic.twitter.com/o7gEPW5Xj3

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 7, 2024

Over at the Federalist, Matt Beebe dug into into the Walz stolen valor controversy and found much deeper problems with the governor’s story that go beyond merely inflating his service record:

The commonly accepted definition of stolen valor includes misrepresenting the scope of one’s military service. For his part, the man who replaced Walz and eventually deployed to Iraq in his place — Command Sgt. Maj. Tom Behrends — claimed it is absolutely reflective of his character and integrity, saying, “The public needs to know how pathetic his leadership was as a National Guardsman.”

Behrends linked Walz’s abrupt retirement to the fact that the unit had received a warning order to deploy only a few months before Walz’s departure. “He abandoned us. What the hell kind of leader does that? As soon as the shots were fired in Iraq he turned and ran the other way and hung his hat up and quit,” Behrends said.

As for Walz’s retirement from the National Guard and controversy over his rank, the recordkeeping doesn’t line up with the governor’s repeated statements:

He was conditionally promoted to command sergeant major during this time, which placed him at risk of having the promotion revoked if he failed to complete his minimum length of service obligation and pass the Army’s Sergeant Major Course. He elected to retire abruptly after about four years of total additional service and failed to complete his obligation. In September 2005, the paperwork caught up with him, and his promotion was officially rescinded.

The conditional promotion, however, immediately confers all the benefits and privileges of the higher rank but lays out certain obligations that the service member must promise to fulfill or his promotion will be rescinded. This is what happened in the case of Walz’s short-lived promotion to command sergeant major. He wasn’t given a temporary privilege that expired when he left the service, but he was retroactively demoted in accordance with the agreement he signed and failed to live up to. His paperwork shows he retired as a master sergeant.

Digging deeper into the NGB Form 22, Report of Separation and Record of Service for Walz, his date of rank for his promotion to command sergeant major (E9) was April 1, 2005. His date of discharge was May 16, 2005. Only 46 days had elapsed. Given the National Guard is a part-time job, one would be forgiven for wondering if this was even enough time to have new insignia sewn on all his uniforms. The official government paperwork marking his demotion was processed approximately four months later on Sept. 10.

Yet Tim Walz campaigned and marketed himself as a “retired” command sergeant major until the backlash caused him to fine-tune his messaging: In most of his literature now he’s careful to refer to himself as a “former” command sergeant major. In some places, he uses an “achieved the rank of” modifier to provide a fig leaf of plausibility to his puffery. His official Minnesota biography still refers to him as “Command Sergeant Major Walz.” Presumably, most ordinary voters won’t notice the sleight of hand, but one wonders why he doesn’t just say retired master sergeant.

Is it splitting hairs? Maybe, but when a politician constantly and repeatedly refers to their service and makes claims related to whether they served in combat or specific ranks they achieved, it’s entirely within the purview of public interest to validate the veracity of those claims.

If your reasoning for pushing gun control is that you saw “weapons of war” on the battlefield that don’t belong on America’s streets, but that isn’t true, is it worth pointing that out? Yes, it is, especially when false claims are being twisted to give someone like Walz some sort of moral high ground in the argument.

In many ways, Walz is simply a Minnesota version of Joe Biden.

Everything he says is couched in a story that’s emotionally related to himself or his past service or experience so you better damn well not question him. You also better not question his commitment to the military because he served “in war,” “at war,” or “during a war” or something. In reality, Walz went to Italy but never saw combat, according to his record.

Walz is a quintessential blowhard like Joe Biden. His ego inflates his record and experience to gain the moral high ground in the room when in reality he falls apart under scrutiny.

The Harris campaign must have known about this but maybe brushed it off as a non-issue, and in the end, it may mean nothing to voters.

On the other hand, the last big-ticket Democrat to flagrantly use his military service was John Kerry, and that ended poorly.

Here’s JD Vance, at a press conference, something the Harris campaign is unfamiliar with, answering a direct question about Walz’s attack:

NEW: @JDVance fires back at Tim Walz over accusations of "stolen valor." 🔥

"Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? 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… pic.twitter.com/xtWMN7EyUq

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 7, 2024