Republican radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday said a clip of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz talking about his memory of Bagram Airfield proved Walz had falsely taken credit for serving in Afghanistan.
“I stood one night in the dark of night on the tarmac at Bagram and watched a military ramp ceremony,” Walz said during a Sept. 11 remembrance ceremony in 2021. “And if you’ve seen it … you don’t leave the same, and it makes you wonder, what are we doing?”
Walz served in the National Guard and deployed to Europe, not Afghanistan, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom from August 2003 to April 2004. The clip seemed to be another example of Walz exaggerating his service, in what Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance on Wednesday described as “stolen valor garbage.”
But Hewitt’s supposed bombshell didn’t catch on with prominent Republicans, because even though Walz didn’t deploy to Afghanistan, he did visit the country on a congressional delegation in 2008, according to contemporaneous press releases and articles. He didn’t claim in his speech that he’d seen the military ramp ceremony as part of his earlier deployment.
Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Iraq War, has slammed Walz for retiring from the Army National Guard in 2005 before his unit deployed to Iraq. Walz had served in the guard for 24 years.
It’s too soon to say whether the more substantive criticism from Vance since last week will hurt Walz’s standing with voters. So far, one poll, conducted over the weekend by Morning Consult, suggests voters view Walz favorably by a 5-point margin after his initial days on the campaign trail. (The same survey showed Vance underwater by 13 points.)
On Tuesday, Walz acknowledged the criticism but avoided getting into details. “I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person’s service record,” he said in a speech.
The Democratic presidential campaign declined to comment for this article.
The attacks on Walz recall the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Democrat John Kerry in 2004, in which dubious criticism of Kerry’s military service seriously damaged his bid for president. One of the architects of that effort, GOP strategist Chris LaCivita, now works for Republican Donald Trump’s White House campaign.
Democrats have not centered Walz’s military service to the extent Kerry did with his time in Vietnam before the 2004 election. Instead, they have focused more on Walz’s tenure as a social studies teacher and high school football coach.
Trump himself did not bring up Walz’s alleged embellishment of his military background in a lengthy press conference last week or in an even longer interview with billionaire Elon Musk on Monday evening. As someone who famously avoided the Vietnam War draft decades ago, Trump may not be the best messenger.
In his Wednesday remarks, Vance contrasted Walz’s retirement with his own deployment to Iraq in 2005.
“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him,” Vance said.
Republicans used the same line of attack against Walz in his successful runs for governor of Minnesota in 2018 and 2022, amplifying complaints from multiple soldiers who served with Walz.
Retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, who said he served as the unit’s chaplain, last week said it was “cowardly” for Walz to retire so he could run for Congress. Others have said he betrayed his unit when it needed his leadership.
Nevertheless, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, an influential hub of right-wing opinion, on Thursday called the accusations against Walz “thin gruel,” echoing The New York Sun. The board noted that if the National Guard needed him, it could have refused to let him retire.
Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit received formal notice that it would deploy to Afghanistan. In a press release from his congressional campaign that March, however, Walz said he was aware his unit might deploy and that he would go with it. He apparently changed his mind.
“He retired from the Minnesota National Guard on May 16, 2005. Our records do not indicate when he made his request to retire,” Army Col. Ryan Cochran, the Minnesota National Guard’s director of manpower and personnel, said in a statement Tuesday. “Leadership reviews and approves all requests to retire.”
Retired Maj. Gen. Randy Manner was responsible for coordinating alert and mobilization orders for the National Guard at the Pentagon from 2006 through 2008. He said an officer’s retirement papers would have to be approved by everyone in their chain of command, and that the ultimate decision would rest with their state’s senior military officer, known as an adjutant general.
“They would have rejected his retirement request” if they thought they needed him, Manner told HuffPost. “And by the way, that did happen all over the Guard and the regular Army, too.”
The stolen valor accusation has stemmed less from the timing of Walz’s departure from the guard than from instances in which he referred to himself as a command sergeant major — a rank he obtained but essentially forfeited when he retired because he had not completed the necessary coursework.
And Vance criticized Walz for having once said, during remarks about gun control in 2018, that he carried a weapon of war “in war” even though he never saw combat. Democrat Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign acknowledged that Walz “misspoke.”
On Tuesday, rather than address his bogus Bagram Airfield claim, Hewitt pointed to examples of Walz allegedly giving the impression that he had served in a combat zone or failing to correct other people for suggesting he had.
“[If] there is a video or audio recording of Governor Walz taking the time to explain that he doesn’t want the audience confusing his service with combat zone service and detailing the difference, it hasn’t surfaced yet,” Hewitt wrote.
