It's been almost a week since Vice President Kamala Harris selected Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate, and the pick has come with plenty of baggage for the ticket. When Minneapolis was burning during the 2020 riots after George Floyd's death, Walz held off on calling in the National Guard in a timely manner. That's looking even worse, given the comments that have resurfaced on what Walz had to say about guardsmen, as highlighted by streiff at our sister site of RedState.
"I don’t think the mayor knew what he was asking for. He wanted the National Guard, and what does that mean? I think to the mayor, yes, it's a perception, I'm certainly not questioning that," Walz said during a local Fox 9 interview, despite how he didn't act in a timely manner. "I think the mayor said, 'I request the National Guard, whew, this is great. We’re going to have massively trained troops.' No, you’re going to have 19-year-olds who are cooks," the governor continued.
As Dustin Grage, who posted the clip, pointed out, his cousin was deployed with the National Guard in Minneapolis and he was an Army Ranger.
Mayor Jacob Frey wanted the Governor to send in the National Guard to restore the peace in Minneapolis.
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) August 8, 2024
Tim Walz mocked his fellow Guardsmen as “19 year-old cooks.” Which is ridiculous.
My cousin deployed with the National Guard in Minneapolis and he was an Army Ranger. pic.twitter.com/E3D44W9TMx
It was a Wednesday when Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a fellow Democrat, asked the governor to call in the National Guard. The police chief did as well. They didn't arrive until the early hours of Friday morning, though considerable damage had already been done, which included how the Minneapolis Third Precinct had been ransacked.
Streiff shared some of his own perspective when it comes to calling out the governor [Emphasis original]:
As a former National Guardsman, Walz's answers and responses sound blatantly dishonest. He should have trained in crowd control at some point in his career and would have known that you don't put troops on the streets with automatic weapons until things have gone pear-shaped in a major way. From personal experience, I was deployed as part of an Operation GARDEN PLOT exercise to secure a real nuclear weapons storage facility against a sizeable force of role-players. Even under those circumstances, I had a strict progression in the use of force to follow. You didn't load weapons until you were in extremis. I find it hard to believe that an organization that has managing civil disturbances as a primary mission would not have rules on the use of force.
...
When Walz bailed out of his National Guard unit rather than deploy to Iraq, his unit, a field artillery battalion, was tasked with providing convoy security. Among them were 19-year-olds who had been trained for something entirely different. And some of the men Walz abandoned didn't come home. Including at least one 19-year-old.
That he allowed Minneapolis to burn was bad enough for Walz. There have also been concerns about stolen valor, and these unearthed comments don't help, especially with the governor denigrating 19-year-olds for their service.
Part of those concerns have to do with how Walz was himself involved in the National Guard, though he retired in 2005 before his unit could be deployed to Iraq and ran for Congress.
As Walz's battalion commander noted in part in a Facebook post, "I do not regret that Tim Walz retired early from the Minnesota Army National Guard, did not complete the Sergeants Major Academy, broke his enlistment contract or did not successfully complete any assignment as a Sergeant Major... I have no opinion of Mr. Walz's decision to leave service at the time he did. It was his right to retire early."
"He did not earn the rank or successfully complete any assignment as an E9. It is an affront to the Noncommissioned Officer Corps that he continues to glom onto the title. I can sit in the cockpit of an airplane, it does not make me a pilot," the commander did also note, however. "Similarly, when the demands of service and leadership at the highest level got real, he chose another path."
Others who served have also taken to social media and media appearances to call Walz out and those in the mainstream media defending him.
Drew Holden has meanwhile compiled a helpful thread to keep track about concerns with claims about Walz's stolen valor, which includes details about retiring from the National Guard.
🧵Thread🧵
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) August 12, 2024
I know it’s difficult to keep track of all of Tim Walz’s “stolen valor,” exaggerations & false claims about his time in the military.
I tried to compile as many as I could, as well as a few egregious cases of the media spinning for him.
Buckle in, there’s a lot. ⤵️
In fact, when Walz’s unit deployed, he retired, leaving his soldiers in the lurch without one of their senior officers.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) August 12, 2024
Unsurprisingly, the soldiers who did deploy don’t exactly think fondly of Walz. @CaitlinDoornbos & @jchristenson_ talked to them. pic.twitter.com/S3xpxZifbn
And then there were the efforts to obfuscate by providing context.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) August 12, 2024
I thought it couldn’t get worse than this @nytimes headline.
Then I read the piece. Here’s just a couple highlights (more at my newsletter piece on the subject.) pic.twitter.com/pg6c9xuCsb
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