Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota failed to correct then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she praised him for his service “on the battlefield” in a resurfaced video from 2007.
Walz’s claims about his military service and the timing of his 2005 retirement from the Minnesota National Guard have come under scrutiny since Vice President Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate Tuesday. In the video, Pelosi and other House Democrats were discussing a congressional resolution regarding the Iraq War while she introduced Walz, remarking on his military service.
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“We’ll hear from Congressman — Command Sergeant Major — Tim Walz,” Pelosi said during the event in the CSPAN video while introducing Walz, then a first-term Minnesota Congressman. “And I was so moved by what Tim has said. He said he has taught these young people in high school, and then he had to lead them in the armed services. So he has, he knows, the potential of our young people and what we put at risk when we send them into harm’s way without the equipment that they need. He will speak for himself, but I want him to know how much we all appreciate his service to our country, whether it’s in the classroom or on the battlefield.”
Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, the GOP nominee for vice-president, accused Walz of “dishonesty” while speaking at a campaign event in Wisconsin Wednesday, citing remarks Walz made in a video posted to X by the Harris campaign in which he called for a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” labeling them “weapons of war, that I carried in war.”
Walz served as a command sergeant major but retired as a master sergeant due to a failure to complete required coursework for the promotion, according to the Washington Free Beacon. The Harris campaign scrubbed the description of Walz as a “retired Command Sergeant Major” from his bio on their website after his title came under criticism.
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Retired Army Command Master Sergeants Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr accused Walz of retiring to avoid deploying to Iraq in a 2018 letter to the West Central Tribune that resurfaced after Walz was chosen as Harris’s running mate.
“The bottom line in all of this is gut wrenching and sad to explain. When the nation called, he quit. He failed to complete the United States Army Sergeants Major Academy. He failed to serve for two years following completion of the academy, which he dropped out of. He failed to serve two years after the conditional promotion to Command Sergeant Major,” Behrends and Herr wrote. “He failed to fulfill the full six years of the enlistment he signed on September 18th, 2001. He failed his country. He failed his state. He failed the Minnesota Army National Guard, the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion, and his fellow Soldiers. And he failed to lead by example. Shameful.”
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Retired Army Command Master Sergeant Doug Julin, who was the command sergeant major of the National Guard brigade Walz was assigned to, criticized the Minnesota governor in a Sept. 26, 2022, interview with Alpha News, saying Walz secured the retirement in a “backdoor deal” after he had previously assured Julin he was willing to deploy to Iraq in an early 2005 meeting.
“Then out of nowhere in June of 2005, Tom Behrends is there as the new [command sergeant major],” Julin told Alpha News.
Pelosi and Walz’s offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.