It’s getting increasingly hard to believe that the widespread inaccuracies about Walz’s record are merely a series of unrelated misunderstandings.
Early this morning, Phil Klein pointed me to a video, which I had not yet seen, of then-congressman Tim Walz nodding along to C-SPAN’s Greta Brawner as she introduces the Minnesota representative at the start of an interview. In this March 2016 sitdown, Walz’s biographical information and military résumé are read back to him, and in it, Brawner describes Walz as having “served with his battalion in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.”
In the clip — you can watch the entire 45-minute interview here — Walz nods affirmatively when he is described as a member of the House Armed Services Committee and as a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee. He nods affirmatively and smiles when the audience is told that he is “the highest ranking enlisted soldier to ever serve in Congress.” And then, after a slight pause, Walz nods affirmatively when he is described as having served in Afghanistan with his battalion, the 1-125th Field Artillery of the Minnesota National Guard.
Walz, as we all now know, did no such thing.
What makes this clip especially alarming to me is the fact that, as anyone who has appeared in television interviews knows, biographical details such as those read by Brawner about the two congressmen are almost always provided to the interviewer by the interviewee or are, at the very least, verified by the individuals being interviewed before the cameras roll. Indeed, in the few TV appearances that I have made in my capacity as a National Review editor, I have been asked to provide a brief biographical introduction to the show’s producers, including relevant details about my own military service when I discussed a military-related matter such as the war in Ukraine.
How is it then possible that this blatantly inaccurate statement made it on to the air? I am very skeptical that Greta Brawner made up that detail out of the blue. That’s not how these things work. In fact, at the close of the introductions, as Brawner transitions to the topic at hand (proposed Obama-era reductions in the manning levels of the Armed Forces), Brawner tells the congressmen, “I read that” — i.e., the written biographical introductions — “because I want to preface our discussion with your military careers because you two are trying to stop President Obama from drawing down the Army.”
Why did Walz not immediately stop and correct the record when he was described inaccurately as a veteran of the Afghanistan war? The whole point of the recounting of the congressmen’s military careers and résumés was to give the two men credibility when discussing matters of military concern. Shouldn’t Walz therefore be a stickler about making sure that information was accurate in order to safeguard his credibility?
Yes, it’s true that at the 6:50 mark of the interview, as part of a longer soliloquy about frequent deployment cycles for U.S. forces, Walz mentions how his “Guard unit backfilled to Europe to provide the security mission as the 173rd [Airborne Brigade] moved to Afghanistan,” but he never corrects the record about his service, or lack thereof, in Afghanistan.
It’s especially galling, in my opinion, that this incident happened in a joint interview in which Walz was sitting next to New York’s Chris Gibson, a retired U.S. Army colonel and a man who faithfully served his country on four combat deployments and earned a Purple Heart, four Bronze Stars, and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge.
I don’t know about you, but if I had been sitting next to such a man to discuss matters concerning our armed forces, and a national TV audience was told that I had served in a combat zone when I had not, I would explicitly correct the record.
All week, I have grown increasingly perturbed by what can only be called a nearly two-decade-long pattern of sloppy and arguably mendacious mischaracterizations of Tim Walz’s service record in which Walz, Walz’s various political campaigns, and members of the press have consistently promulgated inaccuracies.
The editorial board of NR laid out many of the details this week, writing:
From the beginning of Walz’s political career, Walz and his campaign staff have been loose with their characterization of Walz’s overseas-deployment record in a way that seems intended to leave the uninformed with the impression that Walz served in a combat zone.
Usually, these statements have been phrased in ways that could be plausibly defensible if Walz had been pressed on them. His 2005 press release, for example, states that Walz served overseas “including an eight month deployment during Operation Enduring Freedom.” On other occasions, Walz has said that he deployed “in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.” These statements, referring to Walz’s 2003 deployment to Italy, are of course technically true, but it’s easy to see why some veterans would complain that Walz’s statements are intended to obfuscate the reality of Walz’s service and imply that Walz spent time in Afghanistan.
That editorial goes on to lay out how, over the years, there has been an ongoing pattern of friendly journalists calling Walz a veteran of combat zones, variously, in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Again, how is it that all of these mistakes happen in the same direction? Why is there a consistent pattern of third parties, acting in good faith, getting the idea that Walz has served in a combat zone? Why did C-SPAN’s Greta Brawner think that Walz had served with his battalion during the war in Afghanistan?
Of course, the through-line of all these incidents are conversations and interactions with Tim Walz himself.
It is my general philosophy to assume incompetence rather than malign intent whenever something goes wrong in public life. It should go without saying that such a standard should be applied across the board — both to those whose politics I might find simpatico and for those on the other side of the aisle.
For this reason, I have strained to give Walz the benefit of the doubt in the controversy over his military service. But it is getting increasingly hard to believe that the widespread inaccuracies and mischaracterizations about Walz’s record are merely a series of unrelated misunderstandings that have nothing at all to do with Tim Walz.