Hillary Clinton Rallies Support for Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz.
Hillary Clinton has come out in support of Minnesota Governor and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, Tim Walz, who is currently facing scrutiny for allegedly exaggerating his military service and retiring from the military when he knew his unit would deploy to Iraq. The former Secretary of State posted a tweet on Monday highlighting Walz’s honorable service in the military for two decades and his work in passing a new GI bill that helped fund the college educations of millions of veterans, including JD Vance.
Clinton’s tweet did not address Walz’s false claims regarding his military rank or combat experience. The Governor has been accused of claiming to be a retired command sergeant major when he actually retired at a lower rank and asserting that he carried weapons “in war” despite never having served in combat. Furthermore, Walz allegedly chose to retire from the military shortly before his unit was set to deploy to Iraq, with him serving as its senior enlisted leader.
Since Vice President Kamala Harris selected Tim Walz as her running mate, there has been increasing pressure on him to address his past claims about his military service. Throughout his political career, which began in 2006 when he was elected to Congress, Walz has consistently touted his military experience and has even falsely claimed that he was the highest-ranking senior enlisted servicemember to serve in the U.S. Congress. On multiple occasions, he has also implied that he had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, without correcting those who made the same assertion.
The Harris-Walz campaign has only addressed one of Walz’s false claims so far: that he carried weapons “in war.” The campaign posted a video on its Twitter account in which Walz made this claim before his military record became a point of controversy. However, questions about his past statements remain unanswered, and Clinton’s tweet has garnered attention due to its omission of these issues.