During his joint CNN interview with Vice President Kamala Harris Thursday evening, Minnesota governor Tim Walz brushed aside criticisms that he has misrepresented his military service, telling network host Dana Bash that his “grammar is not always correct” but that his “record speaks for itself.”
In the middle of Thursday’s interview, Bash asked Walz to address comments he made in a 2018 campaign clip during which he said the country should restrict ownership of the types of weapons that “I carried in war” – a misleading statement given he deployed to Italy in 2003 but never served in a combat zone.
“I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt,” Walz says in the video, which was posted by the Harris-Walz campaign on X on August 6. “I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.”
During Thursday’s interview, Bash pressed the governor on the Harriz-Walz campaign’s admission that he misspoke by suggesting that he had carried weapons in a combat zone.
“First of all, I’m incredibly proud I’ve done 24 years of wearing the uniform of this country, equally proud of my service in a public-school classroom, whether it’s Congress or or the governor,” Walz said. “My record speaks for itself, but I think people are coming to get to know me. I speak like they do. I speak candidly.”
“I wear my emotions on my sleeves, and I speak especially passionately about — about our children being shot in schools and around — around guns,” he continued. “So I think people know me. They know who I am. They know where, where my heart is. And again, my record has been out there for over 40 years to speak for itself.”
Walz spent 24 years in the Army National Guard but retired in 2005 soon after finding out that his unit would be deploying to Iraq. Instead of going overseas, Walz ran for Congress. Until recently, Harris’s campaign website identified Walz as a “retired command sergeant major,” though he actually retired at a lower rank because he failed to complete the requirements to retire at the level advertised.
After pressing him further on the matter, Walz deflected by pointing out that his wife is an English teacher and his “grammar is not always correct.”
Republicans have spent recent weeks hitting Walz for mischaracterizing his service and retired rank on numerous occasions, as well as his decision to retire a few months before his unit was deployed to Iraq.
“Combat is a horrific experience,” Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said in an interview with National Review earlier this month. “To try to put yourself in a position to state that, ‘Well, I went to combat,’ and then to do it in the context of politics — it’s just an unforgivable sin. It speaks to character.”
Senator J. D. Vance (R., Ohio), a Marine veteran, has led the charge against Walz’s military-related misstatements for the GOP ticket.
“What bothers me about Tim Walz is this stolen-valor garbage,” Vance said at a campaign stop in early August. “Do not pretend to be something that you’re not.”
The Harris-Walz campaign also had to correct the record earlier this month after incorrectly stating that Walz “chaired Veterans Affairs” while in Congress. He served as ranking Democrat on the committee, but never as chairman.