Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is homing in on what advisers see as a potential liability for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: his departure from the Army National Guard two decades ago.
“I think it’s shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to make a promise that you’re going to follow through, and then to drop out right before you actually have to go,” Vance added.
The strategy, which Trump amplified Wednesday by calling Walz a “DISGRACE” on Truth Social, is a throwback to 2004, when Republicans attacked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s record as a Navy officer in Vietnam. Chris LaCivita — who was a consultant to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group that helped sink Kerry’s bid — is a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign and has signaled an eagerness to reopen the playbook on Walz.
“And when his men needed him the most … as they headed into the Crucible that is combat … he deserted them … left them,” LaCivita posted Tuesday on X, shortly after Harris selected Walz to join her on the Democratic ticket. “Why? So he could run for Congress.”
“After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired Veterans Affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform — and as Vice President he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families,” Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in a statement.
Walz has faced such attacks before, including in his re-election campaign in 2022, when his GOP opponent questioned his decision to leave the service in 2005. Walz’s campaign responded with a letter signed by 50 veterans praising his record and leadership.
“Governor Walz secured additional funding for new veterans homes,” read the letter, a copy of which the Harris campaign shared Wednesday with NBC News. “In his first term, Minnesota was one of just seven states initially selected by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to participate in the ‘Governor’s Challenge’ to eliminate veteran deaths by suicide.”
Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative commentator, drew attention Tuesday to a paid letter to the editor that scrutinized Walz’s service and was published by the West Central Tribune newspaper of Willmar, Minnesota, in 2018, days before he won his first term as governor. Erickson also called for a return of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, prompting LaCivita’s initial social media post. Other posts followed.
“He deserted his men and quit before they went to combat,” LaCivita wrote of Walz in response to a complimentary post from Alyssa Farah Griffin, a co-host of the daytime talk show “The View” and a former Trump White House aide who has since denounced Trump.
LaCivita’s previous work with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth stands as one of the most aggressive and potentially consequential political attacks of the modern era.
Kerry — who was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and, for wounds sustained in battle, three Purple Heart medals — had drawn the ire of many veterans for his advocacy against the war after he returned home. And as he sought the presidency in 2004, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran ads accusing him of lying about his service on 50-foot aluminum crafts that ran dangerous missions in the Mekong Delta waterways of South Vietnam. Some of the veterans featured in the ads said he had won awards under false premises.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before becoming friends with Kerry in the Senate, criticized the ads and noted that the veterans making claims against Kerry did not serve on his boat. Some of those who did supported Kerry’s accounts. The allegations, which Kerry did not immediately counter, muddied the picture he presented of himself as a war hero — which appeared to be the group’s aim from a political perspective. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth may not have proved its case, but it sowed doubt about a perceived strength of Kerry’s — his war service — and about his credibility.
FactCheck.org concluded after exhaustive research that “at this point, 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth.” Kerry lost to President George W. Bush.
Walz joined the National Guard in 1981, just after his 17th birthday. After he transferred from the Nebraska National Guard in 1996, he served in the Minnesota National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, said Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the Minnesota Guard’s public affairs officer. Walz, Augé added, “culminated his career serving as the command sergeant major for the battalion” and “retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy.”
During Walz’s nearly quarter-century of service, he was part of flood fights, responded to tornadoes and spent months on active duty in Italy, according to the Harris campaign. Walz “was deployed to Italy in 2003 to protect against potential threats in Europe while active military forces were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in 2022, attributing the information to Walz in an article about the scrutiny of his military service.
Walz and Vance are the first veterans on a national ticket for either major party since McCain was the GOP presidential nominee in 2008. Vance, 40, briefly chronicled his experiences in Iraq in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” recalling his work as a public affairs Marine.
“Sometimes I’d escort civilian press, but generally I’d take photos or write short stories about individual marines or their work,” he wrote. “Early in my deployment, I attached to a civil affairs unit to do community outreach. Civil affairs missions were typically considered more dangerous, as a small number of marines would venture into unprotected Iraqi territory to meet with locals.”
In a post Tuesday on X that highlighted Walz’s hunting and military background, the Harris campaign shared undated video that featured him talking about gun control.
“We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” Walz says in the brief clip.
Vance alluded to the video at campaign stops Wednesday, accusing Walz of misrepresenting his military service and asserting that he never spent time in a combat zone.
“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq?” Vance asked at an event near Detroit. “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, arriving for an event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Vance told reporters that he had “served in a combat zone” and “never said that I saw a firefight myself, but I’ve always told the truth about my Marine Corps service.”
Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt also alluded to the video in a statement, telegraphing the campaign’s intentions to keep pressing on Walz’s military record.
“Tim Walz is a fraud who wants to ban firearms like the ones he claimed to carry in war — except Tim Walz never deployed to a combat zone and lied about his record of service in the National Guard,” Leavitt said. “If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”
Asked about the video, a Harris campaign spokesperson did not deny that Walz had embellished when he spoke of carrying weapons in war.
“In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times,” the spokesperson said. “Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country — in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.”
Henry J. Gomez is a senior national political reporter for NBC News
Adam Edelman is a politics reporter for NBC News.
Jonathan Allen is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News.
© 2024 NBC UNIVERSAL By Nikki McCann Ramirez
There’s very little the two men running to be the nation’s next vice president have in common, but the one thing they do share is a history of military service.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who as of Tuesday is running alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, served for 24 years as a member of the Army National Guard after voluntarily enlisting at the age of 17. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), former President Donald Trump’s running mate, served for four years as a member of the Marines.
On Wednesday, Vance took a swing at Walz over his military record, repeating viral claims that Walz had “dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him” to Iraq. Vance described Walz’s military record as “stolen valor garbage.”
JD Vance accuses Tim Walz of "stolen valor": "[Walz] said we shouldn't allow weapons that [he] used in war to be on America's streets. … When were you ever in war? … Do not pretend to be something that you're not." pic.twitter.com/TI09Yil0RL
As a member of the Army National Guard, Walz helped respond to major natural disasters, worked in firearm and artillery training, received commendations as a prolific sharpshooter, and was sent to Italy to support U.S. operations in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. In 2005, Walz ended his military career to pursue a successful run for Congress, he retired honorably with a slew of awards and medals and the rank of master sergeant — an administrative downgrade from command sergeant major, which he had been promoted to earlier in the year but had not completed training for.
The senator actually misquoted Walz in his screed. In the clip Vance was referencing, Walz says that he “carried” weapons in war, not “used.” Given that Operation Enduring Freedom was a part of the post-9/11 War on Terror, and that Walz was deployed to Italy under it — and likely had a service weapon — the claim that he is engaging in “stolen valor” holds little water.
Vance spoke on Wednesday as if he served more honorably than Walz, noting that he went to Iraq “I did it, I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably,” he said The senator was deployed for six months in Iraq as a combat correspondent in 2005 as part of the Marines’ Public Affairs office. He — like Walz — never engaged in active combat and has stated that he was “lucky to escape any real fighting,” during his deployment.
Walz has spoken at length about his service in the past, and it’s not the first time his political opponents have attempted to diminish his service. The claim that Walz abandoned his unit to avoid fighting in Iraq was leveled against him in 2018 and 2022, during his campaigns for the governorship and reelection, largely by former state Sen. Scott Jensen and Thomas Behrends — a former National Guardsman who was deployed to Iraq after Walz’s retirement.
In 2022, former battalion commander Joseph Eustice, who served with Walz, told the Star Tribune that the accusations against Walz stemmed from ill-informed or “sour-grapes” soldiers who were passed over for promotions. “He was a great soldier,” Eustice told the Tribune. “When he chose to leave, he had every right to leave … The man did nothing wrong when he chose to leave the service; he didn’t break any rules.”
In 2018, Al Bonnifield, who served under Walz in the Guard, told MPR News that Walz “talked with us for quite a while on that subject [of retiring]. 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.”
Walz told the outlet that “once you’re in, it’s hard to retire. Of my 40 years or 41 years, I had been in the military 24 of them. It was just what you did … So that transition period was just a challenge.”
“I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that,” Walz added. “I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI Bill to leadership opportunities to everything else.”
Twenty-four years of service is nothing to sneeze at, and Vance is running alongside a known draft dodger who has repeatedly disparaged veterans and Gold Star families. If Vance wants to critique a man’s honor, he should start with his running mate.
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