ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) — After being named the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is treading familiar ground. Kamala Harris’ running mate is under attack for leaving the National Guard to run for public office.
During his campaign appearance in Michigan on Wednesday, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance addressed the question of what the Trump team sees as a potential liability in the inclusion of Walz’s name on the Democratic nominee list.
“When Tim Waltz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, do you know what he did? He left the Army and let his unit go without him, a fact for which he was criticized by many of the people who served with him,” Vance told a crowd in Shelby Township.
Vance, a retired Marine who served in Iraq, accuses Walz of shirking service in Iraq when he left the National Guard in 2005 to run for Congress. Vance claims Walz left his unit before it deployed to Iraq in 2006.
According to the Minnesota National Guard, Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received alert orders to deploy to Iraq. Walz’s combat team received alert orders in July 2005, mobilized in September of that year and deployed in March 2006, according to an October 2007 National Guard press release.
In addition, the records show that Walz officially filed his candidacy for Congress with the Federal Election Commission in February 2005, three months before he retired from the National Guard and five months before his unit received deployment orders.
Walz’s military career has been questioned before, including during his campaign for re-election as governor in 2022, when his Republican opponent questioned his decision to leave the service. Walz said at the time that he had an honorable career.
Yet there are still people who claim Walz was a deserter. Two men wrote on Facebook in 2018 that Walz had quit and “abandoned” the soldiers. This post is now making the rounds again as Walz runs for vice president.
The Harris-Walz campaign said Wednesday that Walz remains committed to the concerns of veterans and military families.
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