Minnesota Governor Tim Walz finally responded Tuesday to allegations of “stolen heroism” by Ohio Senator JD Vance. The Democratic vice presidential candidate said, “I firmly believe that you should never disparage another person’s record of service.”
Walz responded to his Republican counterpart while speaking to members of the public employee union AFSCME in Los Angeles.
“To anyone brave enough to wear this uniform for our great country, including my opponent, I have just a few simple words: Thank you for your service and sacrifice,” Walz added.
Walz also criticized former President Donald Trump in his remarks. He pointed out that Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris worked at McDonald’s as a teenager and asked, “Can you imagine Donald Trump working at McDonald’s and trying to make a McFlurry or something like that?”
Walz, 60, served in the National Guard for 24 years and admitted to falsely claiming he had been deployed in combat at least once. Critics also point to other instances in which he allegedly gave the false impression that he had been deployed in the war.
“What bothers me about Tim Walz is the nonsense about stolen heroism,” Vance said last Wednesday.
Vance, who was deployed to the Iraq War for six months in 2005 while serving as a military journalist with the U.S. Marine Corps, doubled down on his criticism after Walz’s counterattack.
“Hi Tim, thank you for your service,” the 40-year-old Republican vice presidential candidate posted on X in response to Walz’s speech on Tuesday.
“But you shouldn’t have lied about it,” Vance said. “You shouldn’t have said you went to war when you didn’t. And you shouldn’t have said you didn’t know your unit was going to Iraq.”
“We would be happy to discuss this in more detail in a debate,” he added.
In 2018, Walz, who retired from the National Guard in May 2005, said in a speech calling for gun control: “We can ensure that the weapons of war that I carried in war are only carried in war.”
Lauren Hitt, spokeswoman for the Harris-Walz campaign, said Saturday that “the governor made a slip of the tongue.”
Here’s the latest on Vice President Tim Walz’s time with the militia
Walz was also criticized for speaking of his “guilt” for “coming home” when others did not at a 2021 memorial service marking the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – shortly before mentioning his time at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan without clarifying that he was there as a civilian.
Hitt said he was “referring to his congressional delegation trip in 2008” in this case.
Walz was further criticized by former colleagues for retiring shortly after announcing a possible deployment to Iraq in March 2005. He stated that he resigned to run for Congress in 2006.
