In 2004, Tim Walz organized a protest outside a rally for President George W. Bush where he held up a sign that read “Operation Enduring Freedom Veteran 4 Kerry” — referencing the US fight against terrorists in Afghanistan.
The trouble is, in his 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard, Walz never deployed to combat zones in Afghanistan or Iraq. The closest he got was thousands of miles away in Italy. But it’s a label he used again and again — including in his official biography when he ran for Congress two years later in 2006.
That photo shows just one way that Walz, Kamala Harris’ VP pick, has repeatedly exaggerated and embellished his military record. Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, accused the second-term governor of Minnesota of “stolen valor garbage.”
At least one former member of Walz’s National Guard unit who was deployed to Iraq took a dim view of the haphazard way in which the VP candidate has spoken about his service.
“It’s stolen valor,” said the former guardsman, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“He used very specific phrases on his website that would suggest to a civilian that he had been to Afghanistan. He carried signs protesting at a rally for George W. Bush saying he was part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which would signal that he had seen combat in Afghanistan when he hadn’t.”
The Harris-Walz campaign seemed to acknowledge the critics on Thursday when it scrubbed another contested claim about his service record from his official biography on its website — that Walz had retired as a command sergeant major.
(In fact, Walz actually retired from the military with the rank of master sergeant because he hadn’t completed the required additional coursework, the military said.)
That, too, was a claim he made repeatedly. A newly surfaced video from 2009 shows then-Congressman Walz delivering a televised farewell message to a group of soldiers deploying for Iraq in which he calls himself a “retired Command Sergeant Major.”
While far from the worst elision, it demonstrates how the questions being asked are forcing the campaign to do some editorial damage control.
Here is the latest on VP pick Tim Walz’s time in the military
The most egregious — which CNN’s own fact check labeled “absolutely false” — came during a 2018 campaign appearance when Walz was running for governor.
While trying to burnish his pro-gun control bona fides before a small crowd at a campaign event, Walz said, “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.”
When pressed, Walz conceded later that year that he did not “carry weapons of war” in the field of battle.
Iraq vet and former Republican congressman from Michigan Peter Meijer also criticized Walz’s choice of words, but stopped short of agreeing fully with Vance’s assessment that he was guilty of “stolen valor” — lying about military service or achievements to get ahead in civilian life.
“I think Walz played fast and loose with his military bio to stay above water as his congressional district drifted right,” Meijer wrote in a thread on X addressing the accusations against Walz.
“He let audiences paint in their minds a deceptive picture. It was shady, but not stolen valor.”
Alex Plintsas, a decorated Iraq War army veteran and Atlantic Council fellow, called Walz’s choice of words about being a veteran of “Operation Enduring Freedom” “true but misleading” — indicating they deliberately lack context in an attempt to make people believe he fought in Afghanistan.
“Why misleading? When you ask a fellow veteran where they deployed or if they offer first, it’s ‘Iraq,’ ‘Afghanistan,’ ‘Syria’ etc. No one says ‘Operation Enduring Freedom Veteran.’ That goes on the hats you wear to the VA for doctors appointments. I don’t make the rules,” he wrote on X.
In 2009, David Thul, a National Guard veteran and constituent of Walz, marched the protest photo into his campaign office to confront a staffer about the “Operation Enduring Freedom” claim.
“Is there any question in your mind what Enduring Freedom is?” the veteran asks in a viral video of the encounter.
“No,” the staffer said.
“Ok, so I guess most people, yourself included, associate Enduring Freedom with Afghanistan?” he pressed.
“Right, I think his audience understands it encompasses a great deal,” the staffer offered.
The veteran then asked, “My concern, other than this picture, is that the congressman’s website, his official biography, says simply that he [was a veteran] in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Without any other details, don’t you think it’s reasonable people might assume he served in Afghanistan?”
The staffer muttered in reluctant response, “perhaps, I guess.”
The vet than said the photograph “could get the congressman probably thrown in jail for a violation of the [2005] Stolen Valor Act,” which made it “a federal misdemeanor to falsely represent oneself as having received any U.S. military decoration or medal.”
In fact, Walz has also been criticized for putting in for retirement from the Minnesota National Guard before his unit deployed to Iraq for the first time in 2005. Two men in his unit — Sgt. Kyle Miller, 19, and Sgt. 1st Class David Berry, 37, — were killed by IEDs.
The Harris campaign and its supporters downplay these discrepancies as nitpicky, but Meijer said he believes, “it’s fair to hold him to a higher standard as a senior noncommissioned officer,” given Walz’ high-ranking status at the National Guard.
“[It’s] equivalent of Lieutenant-Colonel, that’s a position of great responsibility. That’s a senior position, and there are more expectations of the conduct within the service from somebody in that position,” he said.
The Harris campaign had no comment.
