Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz is facing heat over his portrayal of his military service, with several dozen Republican veterans in Congress denouncing the Minnesota governor and demanding he “come clean.”
In a letter sent to Walz on Wednesday, a group of 50 GOP lawmakers in Congress condemned him for his “egregious misrepresentations” of his military record and for “lying about the nature of your service.” The letter, sent on Trump-Vance letterhead, was signed by four senators and 46 representatives, ranging from those who are staunch allies of former President Donald Trump to centrist GOP incumbents in swing districts.
“You have stated that you are ‘damn proud’ of your service, and like any American veteran, you should be,” the letter reads. “To be blunt, when you falsely claim military service that did not happen and abandon your post, you diminish the real sacrifices made by veterans who did serve in combat. Military service is not merely a job or a uniform.”
The letter comes after Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign referred to Walz early on as a “retired Command Sergeant Major” in its bio of the vice presidential candidate. Although he did achieve that rank, he was moved down to the rank of master sergeant before he retired in 2005.
The campaign has since updated his bio.
Walz has also come under scrutiny for remarks he made in 2018 when he referred to “weapons of war” that he “carried in war” as a way to denounce gun violence. It was pointed out that Walz never served in a combat zone.
“There is no honor in lying about the nature of your service,” the lawmakers wrote. “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.”
The Harris campaign has responded to those criticisms, arguing Walz “misspoke” when he said he carried weapons of war. Instead, the campaign noted, Walz did “handle weapons of war.”
The GOP veterans also decried Walz for “abandoning” the National Guard unit he oversaw before it was deployed to Iraq to run for Congress — an accusation the Trump campaign has repeatedly thrown at Walz despite the fact that he announced his campaign plans months before the unit received its mobilization order.
The letter comes as Walz has faced scrutiny from all corners of the GOP over his military background, with Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, a Marine Corps veteran, accusing his Democratic counterpart of “stolen valor.”
“He has not spent a day in a combat zone,” Vance told reporters in Michigan earlier this month. “I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did.”
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Walz has repeatedly defended his military service, criticizing his GOP opponents by saying they should “never denigrate another person’s service record.”
“I’m going to say it again as clearly as I can: I am damn proud of my service to the country,” Walz said last week at an event in Los Angeles. “To anyone brave enough to put on that uniform for our great country, including my opponent, I just have a few simple words: Thank you for your service and sacrifice.”
