The campaign officials for Vice President Kamala Harris are currently playing damage control following the 2018 statements made by her political partner, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. These statements, made public by the campaign, seemed to suggest that Mr. Walz had experience in active combat. This immediately followed the campaign’s attempts to highlight Walz’s opinions on responsible gun ownership, a topic controversial in its own right.
Rewinding back to a 2018 political gathering, where Gov. Walz represented Minnesota for the House, he alluded to his stint with the Army’s National Guard for 24 years and his hunting background as he shared his stance on gun control. Walz made statements supporting ‘common-sense’ gun regulation that offered protection to Second Amendment rights, including advocating for background checks and limitations on powerful firearms. While this may sound admirable, it seems that the application of common-sense remains variable.
Additionally, during his time in the U.S. Marine Corps between 2003 to 2007, which included the Iraq war, Mr. Vance served his nation. He was consigned to Iraq in 2005 and 2006 and was part of the aircraft wing but was not enlisted as a direct combatant. His official role was a combat correspondent, which primarily involved crafting articles about his own unit’s activities—an interesting role, but certainly not a combat one.
In spite of the comparison made this week between Mr. Kerry’s situation and Mr. Walz’s military service, as suggested by the conservative-oriented editorial team of the very respected Wall Street Journal, there was a noted distinction – the two were not the same. The publication suggested that there were plenty of grounds to criticize Mr. Walz, but not his military history – an interesting perspective.
On several occasions, Governor Walz clarified that he never served in a combat situation. This was reiterated during a CNN interview last month, where Jake Tapper, the anchor, stated that Mr. Walz had been deployed in Afghanistan. To set the record straight, Walz interrupted him, clarifying that he served in Europe to support the Afghanistan war effort rather than a combat role. There are two sides to every story, it would seem.
In a 2018 conversation with Minnesota Public Radio during his run for governorship, Mr. Walz admitted that his military career wasn’t as illustrious as many others, and there are certainly folks that did far more. Not exactly a glowing testament to his time in the service, and something the public should bear in mind.
In his re-election run for governorship in 2022, the Minneapolis Star Tribune noted that Mr. Walz had not glorified the tales of his time in the National Guard but had portrayed himself instead as a former high school teacher and football coach. Alarmingly enough, military service was on the records, but teaching and football coaching were emphasized more than his time on duty.
Interestingly, a 2018 snippet displaying Mr. Walz claiming that ‘those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at’ was not the only statement by Mr. Walz to make waves this week. Clearly, some questions need to be asked about what exactly is going on here.
Critics this week also capitalized on a 2007 clip on C-SPAN from a Capitol Hill news conference. Here, Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker of the time, thanked Mr. Walz for his service ‘on the battlefield.’ With Mr. Walz being identified by C-SPAN as an ‘Afghanistan war veteran’– even when he had clarified that he wasn’t a part of the frontline–something certainly seems to be amiss.
Damage Control in Harris Campaign over Walz’s Military Service Exaggeration appeared first on Real News Now.
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