Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., has made a political career out of “misspeaking.” Why stop now?
The No. 2 on the Democratic Party’s forced dream team campaign ticket, featuring the joyous empty vessel Vice President Kamala Harris, was back to doing what he seems to do best Thursday night. After several weeks of evading actual questions, Harris and her running mate sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash for the first semi-substantive interview of their honeymoon campaign — more than a month after President Joe Biden’s political wake.
Bash was anything but browbeating in an edited, open-notebook test that was anything but adversarial. This is CNN after all, the network where journalistic ethics go to die. But when Bash wasn’t watching Harris peeking at her notes to answer basic policy questions, the host of CNN’s “Inside Politics” was attempting to show she could still ask a tough question or two.
“I want to ask you a question about how you described your service in the National Guard. You said that you carried weapons in war but you had never deployed actually in a war zone. A campaign official said you misspoke. Did you?” Bash posed.
First of all, Walz didn’t misspeak about his military bravado. He lied. And, as The Federalist has reported, he has done so in the name of politics.
‘I’m Incredibly Proud’
In 2018, Walz, while talking about gun violence, said, “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.”
Problem is, Walz never served in a combat zone. His unit was called up early in the war in Iraq — to Italy. Later, in 2005, he abandoned his National Guard unit as it was preparing to deploy to Iraq. Walz, who opted to run for Congress at the time, retired not long before the deployment. He claimed to be a “retired Command Sergeant Major,” a top rank for an enlisted soldier. Except he wasn’t.
Walz looked like he was tired of answering the question. He shook his ruddy head as if he hadn’t used the lie for political currency and delivered what some have described as a “bizarre” reason for why he “misspoke.”
“Well, first of all, I’m incredibly proud. I’ve done 24 years of wearing the uniform of my country. I’m equally proud of my service in a public school classroom, whether it’s in Congress or the governor,” the VP candidate blathered. Spoiler Alert: Walz has no intention of answering this question.
He goes on to say that his “record speaks for itself.” It sure does. It’s a record of lies and of extreme left-wing policies in a proud Midwest state shredded by such policies. A record of tyrannical rule during his draconian Covid lockdowns and of Minnesota’s largest cities being set on fire during the 2020 race riots. But no one in the accomplice media wants to ask Walz about any of that.
He told Bash that he speaks “candidly.” Clearly he does not know what the word “candid” means. He “wears his emotions” on his sleeve. So, that’s where the lying comes from? He’s passionate about children being shot in schools. Understandable. Still, no reason for the lies.
“I think people know me, they know who I am. They know where my heart is and, again, my record has been out there for more than 40 years to speak for itself,” Walz said.
So … about the gun in a combat zone thing?
Bad Grammar, Awful Person
To her credit, Bash didn’t demure on this one. She pressed.
“And the idea that you said you were in war, did you misspeak as the campaign has said?” the CNN anchor asked again.
Frustrated and caught in his obfuscation, Walz blustered, “Yeah, I said we were talking in this case, this was after a school shooting, the ideas of carrying these weapons of war.”
And this is where the bizarre comes in.
“And my wife, the English teacher, told me my grammar is not always correct,” he said.
Grammar?! It’s not like Walz mixed up the usage of lay and lie. He LIED.
Because he’s an awful liar and an awful human being, he blamed his political enemies — like some of the National Guard soldiers who served with him — for his shortcomings in “grammar.”
“But, again, if it’s not this it’s an attack on my children for showing love for me or it’s an attack on my dog,” the governor deflected. “I’m not gong to do that. And the one thing I’ll never do is demean another [service] member’s service in any way. I never have and I never will.”
He demeaned the service of members of the military for years by claiming he was something he wasn’t, in places he had not been. It’s called stolen valor, and it’s a really lousy thing to do.
Just ask Kathy Miller, the mother of forever 19-year-old Sgt. Kyle Miller, who was killed in 2006 by roadside bomb in Iraq. He was member of the Guard unit Walz left behind.
“My son wasn’t even 21 years old. He couldn’t even buy alcohol. Yet he took the step to serve our country while Walz found the best way to run away,” Kathy Miller told the Daily Mail earlier this month. “It was the coward’s way out.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Comments are closed.