Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate, joined the Army National Guard when he was 17 and stayed in the service for 24 years before retiring in 2005 to campaign for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
But a comment about carrying a weapon "in war" led to accusations of “stolen valor” on the right given Walz retired before his unit deployed to Iraq.
According to some soldiers who served with Walz, he carefully considered the decision to retire from the force before stepping down, talking it over with his soldiers in Minnesota before he went ahead with it.
“Would the soldier look down on him because he didn't go with us? Would the common soldier say, ‘Hey, he didn't go with us, he's trying to skip out on a deployment?' And he wasn't,” Al Bonnifield, who served under Walz, told Minnesota Public Radio in 2018. “He talked with us for quite a while on that subject. He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy. He loved the military, he loved the guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”
Others claimed he ducked out on combat, his departure not long after his unit received orders to mobilize into active duty for deployment to Iraq.
“In early 2005, a warning order was issued to the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion, which included the position he was serving in, to prepare to be mobilized for active duty for a deployment to Iraq,” wrote two retired officers, Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr in a paid letter submitted to the Minnesota newspaper the West Central Tribune. “On May 16, 2005 [Walz] quit, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war. His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire in order to run for Congress. Which is false, according to a Department of Defense directive, he could have run and requested permission from the Secretary of Defense before entering active duty; as many reservists have.”
In the past 24 hours, conservative opponents of Walz revived the controversy, trying to slam Walz for stealing valor and choosing to cut and run when called up to serve.
Many pointed to comments Walz made after the 2018 Parkland shooting where he called for stricter gun control as an example of Walz inflating his service.
“I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt, and I gave the money back [to the NRA],” Walz said at the time. “I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment. But we can do background checks, we can do CDC research, we can make sure we don’t have reciprocal carry among states, and we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only places where those weapons are at.”
That comment about carrying “weapons of war ... in war” drew particular ire from conservatives, who pointed out that Walz had never served in a combat zone and had never been in war.
“What's more disturbing about what Tim Walz says here?” asked YouTuber Mrgunsngear, who describes himself as a U.S. Air Force and Army veteran on X. “1. Gov. Walz never went to war yet clearly said he did 2. Gov Walz is a far left gun grabber.”
“From what i hear, he literally quit the military just to dodge a deployment, so yea what you say checks out, if thats true lol,” posted @afrancis2371, whose bio says he’s a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.
“There is no way around this. It’s stolen valor,” conservative influencer Mike Cernovich wrote. “You can ignore it ... say it doesn’t matter. You can say other issues matter more. That’s perfectly honest. Denying that this [is stolen valor] is fraud. You cannot do so honestly.”
According to a Minnesota Public Radio report, Walz readily acknowledged never being in combat. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs records which Walz shared with the station showed that he filed a claim with the agency in 2013 for hearing loss in both ears and tinnitus. According to the records, Walz attributed the damage to Howitzer cannon from training with his field artillery unit for 21 years. Walz also had a 2005 surgery to replace damaged bones in his ears.
“I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?” Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance asked at a press conference in Michigan on Wednesday. “What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq? He has not spent a day in a combat zone. 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’d lied about his military service like he did.”
Vance, who was in the U.S. Marine Corps for four years after high school was a combat correspondent in the branch’s Department of Public Affairs, according to Stars & Stripes, the military’s in-house newspaper.
“He spent his service working in public affairs, writing about Marines and taking photographs of their work, escorting civilian news reporters and speaking about happenings on base,” the newspaper reported. “In Iraq, he embedded with different units to get a sense of their daily routines and wrote a story about a crew keeping KC-130J tankers in the air. He also waded into unprotected Iraqi territory with a civil affairs unit to meet with locals.”
“I was lucky to escape any real fighting,” Vance reportedly wrote.
Over on Reddit’s r/army subreddit, some soldiers found Walz’s story concerning.
“He was the senior NCO in a field artillery battalion. The guy who is supposed to set the example and uphold the standard. He's the very definition of a Summer Soldier,” wrote u/Bitter_Piano5550. “During the early part of the [Global War On Terror] I served with guys who were Vietnam Vets. Those guys have a lot of respect from me. A guy who serves in the Guard in the 80s and 90s when it was easy, has a vacation to Italy, and then nopes out when his unit is going to combat, doesn't.”
Walz, as the poster notes, deployed to Italy in the early 2000s.
“He seems like a good dude, but that seems like the most ‘I got mine’ leadership I’ve ever heard of,” wrote u/tanstaafl00. “I know more leaders that pulled strings TO deploy than outright quit to avoid going ... I get it. Life is complicated, and more than one thing can be true at once, but that looks real bad.”
But other people defended Walz, saying that the move to retire was a relatable trajectory and that there was no shame in bowing out after nearly two and a half decades in the National Guard.
“At 24 years of service, I don't think anyone can say you haven't done your time and paid your dues,” posted u/Copropostis.
“When my Reserve unit was called up in 2003, we had a couple of guys retire. They were older and had 20 years in or so. No one thought it was a big deal. Getting called up for Reserve or Guard is complicated. It messes with your civilian job, not matter how prepared you are,” added u/tjcoffice.
Other posters saw Walz’s decision to retire as a savvy move.
“The … bots are attacking him because he dropped a retirement packet right as his unit got a warno for deployment to the mid east. Like that’s called winning the fucking game,” posted u/thisisntnamman.
“He did a noncombatant deployment to Eucom in support of Afghanistan operations a few years earlier. He’s a teacher not Rambo,” added u/thisisntnamman.
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