JD Vance Hits Tim Walz on His ‘Shameful’ Military Record

Former President Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), torched Kamala Harris’ V.P. pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, over his military record Wednesday, telling his law enforcement audience that Walz’s decision to dodge deployment to Iraq after preparing his unit to go there was “shameful.”

Vance was speaking in front of the Macomb County police department during a campaign stop in Michigan. Harris and Walz will be in Michigan later Wednesday, visiting Detroit in the evening after visiting Wisconsin earlier in the day.

“You know what bothers me about Tim Walz, as a Marine who served this country in uniform?” Vance began. “When the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably and I’m very proud of that service, the Ohio Senator said.

“When Tim Walz was asked to serve his country in Iraq, do you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him—a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with,” Vance continued.

In 2018, a group of former National Guard members came forward to accuse Walz dodging deployment to Iraq and engaging in “Stolen Valor” by identifying as a Sergeant Major after his rank was reduced to Master Sergeant.

“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 drop out right before you’re about to go,” Vance declared.

Walz enlisted in the Nebraska National Guard in 1981 and transferred to the Minnesota National Guard in 1996. He reenlisted on September 18th, 2001 in the Minnesota Army National Guard for six years.

Walz was reportedly deployed with the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in support of Operation Enduring Freedom to Italy.

The mission was to augment United States Air Force Europe Security Forces doing base security for six months. In no way were the units or Soldiers of the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion replacing any units or military forces so they could deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

According to Retired Command Sergeant Majors Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr, an order was issued to Walz’s artillery battalion in early 2005, warning the unit to prepare to be mobilized for active duty for a deployment to Iraq.

“On May 16th, 2005 he quit, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war,” Behrends and Herr wrote in a paid letter to the Western Central Tribune. “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.”

Behrends and Herr continued: “On September 10th, 2005 conditionally promoted Command Sergeant Major Walz was reduced to Master Sergeant. It took a while for the system to catch up to him as it was uncharted territory, literally no one quits in the position he was in, or drops out of the academy. Except him.”

According to investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel,  Walz’s “stolen valor” goes beyond questions about his rank.

“Walz sold himself to the public and the media as a combat veteran of the Global War on Terror, masking the reality that he quit the military to run for office and avoid being deployed to Iraq,” Schachtel reported on his Substack, the Dossier.  “Just months after leaving his battalion to go to Iraq without him, he announced a run for Congress, and the dissembling about his service record began immediately,” Schachtel wrote.

Bloomberg’s Joshua Green, then employed at The Atlantic, was the first major reporter to profile Walz. In an interview with the then-congressional candidate, Green writes that in 2004, Walz left his hometown in Minnesota “to serve overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom.

It’s unclear if this is Green, a veteran reporter, omitting major facts, or if Walz, the interviewee, is selling Green on a particular narrative. Nonetheless, the assertion is incredibly misleading, as it leaves the reader under the impression that Walz served as boots on the ground in the Global War on Terror, when in reality, he merely deployed to Italy in 2003 for a six month stint.

It gets much worse.

Green discusses a 2004 visit from former President George W. Bush to Gov. Walz’s hometown, in which a protesting Walz (who was still serving in the military) told the reporter about him supposedly demanding to speak to the then commander in chief.

“Walz thought for a moment and asked the Bush staffers if they really wanted to arrest a command sergeant major who’d just returned from fighting the war on terrorism,” Green writes.

While the first instance can be written off as an issue of unclear reportage, the second example cannot be explained away. Walz was not just serving in a support role for the war effort (from Italy), he had been “fighting the war on terrorism.”

According to the article, Walz was picked out of relative obscurity by Democrat operatives due to his military service. These operatives went out and recruited “veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Green writes

Walz to this day, continues to mischaracterize his military service, recently telling an audience while delivering remarks on gun control: “We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.”