Republicans start attacking Walz by going after his military record

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is homing in on what advisers see as a potential liability for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: plan since his honorable discharge from the Army National Guard twenty years ago. 
 
Walz, introduced Tuesday as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, retired from the military in 2005 to run for public office just before the unit he led was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq. 
 
“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, do you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him — a fact that he’s been criticised for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with,” Trump’s running partner, Senator JD Vance, the Marine veteran who had served in Iraq said on Wednesday, during the news conference in Michigan. 
 
“I believe it is disgraceful to get your unit ready for Iraq, to make a commitment that you are going to fulfill before your very eyes and then pull out at the last minute”, Vance said. 
 
The strategy, which Trump escalated on Wednesday, when he referred to Walz as a “DISGRACE” on Truth Social, was employed in 2004 when George W. Bush and republicans questioned John Kerry, the democrats’ nominee, about his record as a Navy officer during the Vietnam War. Chris LaCivita, the consultant on Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group which contributed a lot to the sinking of Kerry’s candidature, serves as a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign and has shown inclination to turn the same screw on Walz. 
 
When his men needed a leader … as they were preparing to enter the crucible that is combat he abandoned them … left them,” LaCivita wrote Tuesday on X, following Harris’ designation of Walz as her running mate. “Why? So he could run for Congress. ” 
 
While defining Walz, the candidate’s website tells more about his age, 60, military background, as well as his coaching period at the St. In particular, campaign officials claim that he decided to quit the National Guard in order to get more rewarding political job that would allow him to be more helpful to other servicemen and veterans. 
 
After 24 years of service in the military, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and went to run for Congress, where he was head of the Committee for Veterans Affairs and stood for the rights of the veterans and military people and Harris–Vice President would do the same, Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in the statement. 
 
Walz has been attacked in such a way before particularly in his re-election campaign in the year 2022 when his GOP opponent criticized his service decision in 2005. The Walz campaign fired back with a letter filled with 50 veterans endorsing Walz and his record. 
 
In the letter, Harris is said to have written cumulating that, “Governor Walz secured additional funding for new veterans homes. ” The letter that the Harris campaign forwarded to NBC News on Wednesday contained the original text. “In his first term, Minnesota was one of 7 initial selected states by the United Sates of Veterans Affairs in the ‘Governor’s Challenge’ to eliminate veterans’ death by suicide. ” 
 
Leading Republican pundit Erick Erickson on Tuesday highlighted a paid letter to the editor that questioned Walz’s service and appeared in the West Central Tribune newspaper of Willmar, Minnesota, in 2018, before Walz clinched his first term as governor. Erickson also categorically demanded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to be brought back, which elicited LaCivita’s first Tweet. Other posts followed. 
 
In replying to a congenial post from Alyssa Farah Griffin, a co-host of the daytime talk show “The View” and a former Trump White House assistant who has disavowed Trump: “He deserted his men and quit before they went to combat,” LaCivita said of Walz. 
 
LaCivita’s prior projects in cooperation with the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth can be considered one of the most harsh and belonging to the most significant political strikes of the present age. 
 
Kerry had decorated himself with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Heart medals for the numerous wounds received in battle and many veterans’ organizations were outraged at his opposition to the war once he returned home. And as he aimed for presidency in 2004 the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth took to the TV with ads that stated that he told lies, tailored to boast about his service on 50-foot aluminum boats that ran perilous missions in the waterways of south Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Some of the veterans who appeared on the television advertisements alleged that he had claimed awards for the wrong reasons. 
 
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. , who was a POW in Vietnam for years and later became Kerry’s pal in the Senate, denounced the ads and pointed out that the veterans making accusations against Kerry were not aboard his boat. Some of the respondents who felt they were affected either by direct confrontation or indirectly, supported the accounts given by Kerry. These accusations, to which Kerry did not respond immediately, somewhat obscured the image of the shocking and fair war hero, which seemed to be the goal of the group based on the political point of view. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth may not have made their case but they were able to plant suspicion with regard to a perceived weakness of Kerry’s in the strength of his war service section which using his own witnesses they were able to question his credibility. 
 
FactCheck. org stated that after extensive investigations, yet it remained impossible to determine which of the two representations stated was closer to the actual truth ‘ 35 years on, half a world away. ’ Kerry was defeated by President George W. Bush. 
 
Walz enlisted in the National Guard in the year 1981 immediately after his seventeenth birthday. He transferred from the NE National Guard in July 1996 and joined the MN National Guard 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, which was organized under the 34th Infantry Division, said Army Lt; Col Kristen Augé, a MN National Guard Public Affairs Officer. Augé also said that, Walz completed his career and worked as command sergeant major for the battalion as well as he was retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit reason and due to the reason that he did not attend any further course in the U. S Army Sergeants Major academy. 
 
This period saw the candidate engage in flood fights, tornadoes and was on active duty in Italy for several months during his almost a quarter of a century service` Harris campaign said. Guarding against threats in Europe Walz was mobilized to Italy in 2003 when forces active in Iraq and Afghanistan Walz told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a 2022 article about his service receiving undue attention that his duty was to protect Europe from liberal threats.

Walz and Vance are oldest veterans on a national ticket for any major party since McCain/ Palin GOP presidential ticket 2008. Vance, 40, gave a brief account of his stay in Iraq in his recent memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy”, which is a work of a public affairs Marine. 
 
“Sometimes I would take civilian press with me but most often I would either photograph or write simple ‘human interest’ pieces about a marine and/or the work he was doing,” he said. “During the first few months of my deployment, I was assigned to a civil affairs unit to help with interaction with the locals. While combat missions were generally safer, civil affairs were regarded as riskier as a few of marines would go to some of the insecure areas of Iraq for a meeting with the locals. ” 
 
On Tuesday in a post on X that pointed out Walz’s hunting and military interests, the Harris campaign provided undated footage in which he discussed gun regulation. 
 
In a short video released by his campaign, Walz comments about guns, “We can guarantee that those weapons of war, those military-style assault rifles that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at. ” 
 
Vance referred to the video at campaign stops Wednesday, claiming that Walz misrepresented him on his military service and asserting that he never served in a combat zone. 
 
He added, ‘Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon that you carried into war inform of, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq?” Briefing his audience at an event – near Detroit. The second issue the user talks about regarding Tim Walz is the stolen valor issues: (What bothers me about Tim Walz is this stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not. I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did. ). 
 
Later, in admitting that he was arriving for a formal, he stated to reporters that he had served in a combat zone and never said that he witnessed a fire fight himself, however he has always been truthful about his Marine Corps. 
 
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt also referred to the video in her comment and signalled the campaign would continue pursing Walz’s military record. 
 
“Tim Walz is fraud who wants to ban firearms like the ones he said he used in war – which Tim Walz never experienced as he served in National Guard and misrepresented himself,” Leavitt said. “If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: Many people smear Kamala Harris as a dangerous radical leftist, and now Tim Walz is another such man: the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s horror. 
 
Channeling the case of the recent Harris campaign video, a representative of the Harris campaign did not dispute the fact that Walz had overstated his claims with regard to carrying weapons in war. 
 
“During the 24 years of service, the Governor uses and pointed guns of war, as well as trained other people, more number of times than anyone wants to imagine,” the spokesperson said. “There is no rumor that Governor Walz will ever disrespect or demean the United States service of any American — We thank Senator Vance for risking his life for this nation; it is the American tradition. ”