CNN thinks it understands what sets Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz apart from the average politician: honesty. “[W]hat Walz has—and it’s rare in politics these days—is that he’s totally comfortable in his own skin. He knows who he is. He’s authentic. And he doesn’t try to be someone else,” said Chris Cillizza, who formerly was on CNN.
Yet Walz stands accused of purveying a string of lies, errors, and prevarications stretching back to his earliest days in politics, fibbing about everything from his military service to whether he won an obscure award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce as a 29-year-old man. Here is a far-from-exhaustive list of the mistruths Walz has communicated.
1. Stolen Valor #1: Serving in War
Walz served 24 years in the National Guard, an honorable action worthy of praise in its own right. During his National Guard service, Walz was stationed in Norway and, when a different unit deployed to Afghanistan, he took its place in Vicenza, Italy from Aug. 3, 2003, until 2004, according to NPR. Walz retired in 2005, as the unit he led was about to be deployed to Iraq.
Yet over the years, he has implied he faced combat during the War on Terror, as well as allowing others to repeat the claim without correction. In a video clip the Harris-Walz campaign shared of a 2018 event calling for gun control legislation against law-abiding citizens in violation of the Second Amendment, Walz said, “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.”
The campaign muddied the waters, telling CNN, “In his 24 years of service, the [g]overnor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country.” A Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson, Lauren Hitt, later claimed Walz “misspoke.”
Yet the errors had piled up for years. A 2006 article in The Atlantic claimed Walz faced a hostile interrogation at a George W. Bush rally after security saw evidence that Walz supported 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry:
His challenge prompted a KGB-style interrogation that was sadly characteristic of Bush campaign events. Do you support the president? Walz refused to answer. Do you oppose the president? Walz replied that it was no one’s business but his own. (He later learned that his wife was informed that the Secret Service might arrest him.) 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.
Numerous video clips have shown figures, including then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., claiming Walz served in combat, without any correction, provoking charges that Walz engaged in “stolen valor.”
A group of 50 military veterans in Congress wrote a letter to Walz expressing their “grave concern” over the fact that Walz may be “a heartbeat away from becoming the Commander-In-Chief. You’ve already demonstrated your unwillingness to lead in time of war and a lack of honor through your blatant misrepresentations exploiting and co-opting the experiences of America’s combat veterans for personal gain.”
The lead author of the letter—Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla.—lost both legs while serving in Afghanistan.
“America’s veterans and servicemembers are rightfully concerned about what would happen to them should you ascend to the Presidency. When America asked you to lead your troops into War, you turned your back on your troops.”
“Until you admit you lied to them, there is no way you can be trusted to serve as Vice President,” they wrote.
Those who served in uniform seem the most upset.
Vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who escaped Appalachian poverty first by enlisting in the Marine Corps, before enrolling in Ohio State University and Yale, said when his country “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. 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, a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with.”
“For 20 years, they let this guy go by with a lie that he deployed to Iraq, which he didn’t, and that he retired as a command sergeant major, which he did not. I mean, that’s just blatant lies,” said Hung Cao, a retired Navy captain and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia.
“I served in the Minnesota National Guard with him. He literally abandoned us when we were about to be deployed to Iraq. He’s a coward and should be treated as such,” stated J.R. Salzman. Multiple members of Walz’s unit, including a chaplain, have spoken out against Walz’s misrepresentation of his military record.
Legacy media outlets, so quick to pounce or artifice any misstatement from former President Donald Trump, have proven remarkably understanding about Walz’s erroneous comments.
The New York Times ran an article “Explaining Claims About Tim Walz’s Military Service,” which noted that four veterans “do not believe the governor is guilty of ‘stolen valor,’ but that he did misrepresent his record at times.”
Some seemingly confessed that they have concerns over the political impact of Walz’s claims, which legacy media fact-checkers minimize or otherwise spin. “False and misleading claims of such a trivial nature might not seem particularly harmful, but a deluge of them could easily add up to real damage at the polls, according to experts. This is especially true when they go after a figure such as Walz, who is still relatively unknown on the national stage,” admitted CBS News.
Yet a few have corrected the record. “There is no evidence that at any time Governor Walz was in the position of being shot at, and some of his language could easily be seen to suggest that he was. So that is absolutely false when he said that about gun rights out there,” said CNN correspondent Tim Foreman. More recently, USA Today columnist Ingrid Jacques referred to Walz’s “disturbing record” as “a bit of a fabulist.”
2. Stolen Valor #2: ‘Retired Command Sergeant Major’
Walz has repeatedly referred to his rank as “retired command sergeant major,” including in the official Walz-Harris campaign biography. Yet Walz actually retired as a master sergeant, because he failed to complete required coursework at the U.S. Sergeants Major Academy when he quit his unit in 2005 to run for U.S. Congress.
“You have stated that you are ‘damn proud’ of your service, and like any American veteran, you should be. But there is no honor in lying about the nature of your service,” stated a letter from 50 veterans serving in Congress. “Repeatedly claiming to be a ‘Retired Command Sergeant Major’ when you did not complete the requirements was not honorable. Nor was it honorable to claim to carry weapons ‘in war’ when you had not served in war, and abandoning the men and women under your leadership just as they were getting ready to deploy was certainly not honorable either.”
Eventually, the Harris-Walz campaign website stealth edited Walz’s biography. Yet an official video shown on the third night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention before his vice presidential acceptance speech said that Walz “served 24 years in the National Guard, rising to Command Sergeant Major.”
3. Walz Claimed His Wife Conceived Through IVF
The Democratic Party has repeatedly claimed the 2022 Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade, has unleashed a torrent of pro-life laws that threaten everything from miscarriage care to in vitro fertilization. Walz claimed to have a very “personal” connection to IVF, claiming he and his wife, Gwen, owe their two children to IVF.
In fact, Walz invoked the Lord’s divine providence for the controversial procedure. “Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children,” Walz told MSNBC in July. Walz weaponized the issue against Vance in August, alleging, “If it was up to him, I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF.” (Vance has spoken in favor of IVF, a controversial procedure in which 9 out of 10 children are never born and unknown millions have been “discarded,” aborted, or abandoned.)
But in an Aug. 19 interview with Walz’s wife, Gwen, Glamour magazine reported that the couple did not conceive via IVF at all. The Walzes participated in a different fertility procedure, known as intrauterine insemination, in which sperm are injected into the uterus. Gwen Walz thanked a nurse in her neighborhood who assisted her “with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process.”
The Harris-Walz campaign attempted to defend Walz’s misleading IVF statements. “Governor Walz talks how normal people talk,” said Mia Ehrenberg, a campaign spokeswoman. “He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.”
Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, IVF was never threatened by an 8-1 Alabama Supreme Court ruling that allowed the parents of children negligently destroyed in IVF clinics to file a civil case under the state’s 1872 Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
4. Walz Misled About His 1995 DUI
As a candidate for Congress in 2006, Walz apparently misled voters about his 1995 arrest for driving under the influence. Walz had claimed the entire arrest was a misunderstanding, based on hearing loss from his valorous military service. But CNN reported:
According to court and policerecords connected to the incident, Walz admitted in court that he had been drinking when he was pulled over for driving 96 mph in a 55 mph zone in Nebraska. Walz was then transported by a state trooper to a local hospital for a blood test, showing he had a blood alcohol level of .128, well above the state’s legal limit of 0.1 at the time.
Walz accepted a plea deal, admitting that he put himself and others in danger by getting behind the wheel.
“It’s just a dangerous situation,” Walz said in a court transcript, which Alpha News, a conservative Minnesota outlet uncovered in 2022. “Not just to myself, but to others who aren’t even involved with it.”
5. ‘Outstanding Young Nebraskan’?
When Walz ran for the House of Representatives in 2006, his official campaign biography stated that in 1993, he “was named the Outstanding Young Nebraskan by the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce for his service in the education, military, and small business communities.” Yet he never won any such award.
“We researched this matter and can confirm that you have not been the recipient of any award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce,” wrote Barry Kennedy, then-president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, in November 2006. “I am not going to draw a conclusion about your intentions by including this line in your biography. However, we respectfully request that you remove any reference to our organization as it could be considered an endorsement of your candidacy.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed Walz’s opponent, Gil Gutknecht, who told The Washington Free Beacon that the fabrication “fits a pattern of misleading and fabricated statements he has made throughout his political and personal life.”
Walz’s campaign later updated the biography, claiming he won an award from the “Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce.” His campaign manager waved off the controversy, telling local media the misstatement had been a “typographical error.”
6. Phony Headlines
Despite the Democratic Party’s continual warning about misinformation—something Walz has erroneously said is not protected by the First Amendment—the Harris-Walz campaign has doctored headlines in its online advertisements.
The campaign reportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaign ads that presented actual news stories from The Associated Press, USA Today, NPR, PBS, CNN, CBS News, and other outlets—but with glowing headlines written by campaign staffers. The intention is to convince readers the unbiased reporters heaped praise on the candidates.
Some of the website’s purveyors say the campaign’s actions have undermined their journalistic integrity. “They lied to every single person that saw that ad. It’s misleading, it’s dishonest, and it hurts us as the company, our news brand,” Steve Hallstrom, president and managing partner of Flag Family Media, told the Daily Caller in August.
7. ‘White Guy Tacos’
Walz appears to have even misled the American people about his palate. In an online video, he apparently stated that “black pepper” is the spiciest food he eats, although Walz has a taste for spicy food.
In the video, Walz gestures toward a table and tells Kamala Harris, “I have white guy tacos.”
“What does that mean? Like, mayonnaise and tuna? What are you doing?” replied Harris, repeating a racial stereotype.
“Pretty much ground beef and cheese,” explained Walz.
When Harris asks if he “put any flavor in it,” Walz said, “No,” because “black pepper is the top of the spice level in Minnesota.”
“Listen, I’m just not much of a spice guy,” said Walz, posting the clip on social media.
Yet in Minnesota, Walz is apparently known for enjoying spicy food. In January 2022, Walz referred to his “award-winning recipe for Turkey Taco Tot Hotdish” (which contains chiles and other peppers) online.
Rolling Stone magazine, which has a strained relationship with the truth, described Walz’s original comments as a “joke.”
This article has been corrected to reflect that Chris Cizilla is no longer at CNN.
Originally published by The Washington Stand
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