Army National Guard veterans are accusing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of being a “habitual liar” about his military rank and why he left his unit before deploying to Iraq, with one veteran joking that “Guantanamo Bay, Cuba” would be a “good place” for the Democratic vice presidential nominee to end up.
“We're not just talking about the people who are in this together,” Tom Berens, Paul Herr, Tom Schilling and Rodney Thau told SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly. Interview Walz was selected as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate last month.
“He's a chronic liar,” Herr said. “He lies about everything. He lies about things that don't make sense.”
“We stole courage [because] “People make cowardly decisions to come back and try to live indirectly by depriving all the other soldiers of all the benefits and sacrifices,” Herr continued.
“They want their share. They feel slighted,” he told Kelly.
“He's a military impersonator,” added retired Army Maj. Tom Berens, “and he literally turned his uniform inside out and took what he was doing into another world: voting against everything that happened in Iraq, voting against Guantanamo, voting against everything.”
“Guantanamo would be a good place for him to end up, by the way,” Behrens joked, eliciting laughter from the three other veterans.
Walz, 60, voted in 2009 to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, but has a mixed voting record on the Iraq War, including approving subsidies and supporting a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Since first running for public office, he has repeatedly claimed to be a “master sergeant,” but he retired before completing the courses required for the rank and was subsequently demoted to sergeant in September 2005.
Both Herr and Behrens retired as master sergeants.
The “defamation” accusations that have plagued the Democratic vice presidential nominee include comments suggesting he served in combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Such hyperbole has been a frequent theme for Walz as he spoke to voters about his military service as a candidate for Congress and as a candidate for Minnesota governor.
When he first ran for governor in 2019, Walz said at a campaign event, “We can study the impact of gun violence. We can make sure that the weapons of war that I carried in war are only carried in times of war.”
Walz's campaign was forced to retract misleading statements about his rank and military record, and Harris' campaign said he had “made false statements” in the past and updated its website to say “Walz has been promoted to master sergeant,” without mentioning the demotion.
Asked about years of misleading statements, Waltz told CNN last week, “My wife, who's an English teacher, says my grammar isn't always correct.”
“I'm outspoken,” he said, attributing his fabrications to his passion for gun control. “I'm not afraid to speak my mind, and I'm particularly passionate about kids getting shot in schools and around guns.”
He also took an aggressive stance at campaign rallies, declaring, “I am deeply proud of my service to this country, and I firmly believe that we should never disparage the service record of others.”
Some Democrats, including Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, have also dismissed the attack as a politically motivated “lie.”
“He decided to run for Congress in February, he got out of the military in May, he was called up to serve in July and then I think he didn't finally deploy until about six months later,” Smith told Kelly.
“He did not leave the National Guard because he did not want to be deployed. To claim that is a complete lie,” he said.
But people who served with Walz disputed that timeline, including Behrens, who said Walz was well aware of the possibility of a deployment to Iraq by late 2004 and filed his papers to run for Congress in February 2005.
Indeed, during Walz's own congressional campaign in March 2005, he touted that he would go to Iraq if the then-candidate deployed, but made no mention of his planned retirement just two months later.
Hur also noted that the future congressman had vowed to his colleagues to “count on me.”
“He told me and the other sergeants in the meeting, 'You can count on me. I'll be deploying with my unit,'” Hale said. “His words were heard by me and others.”
“You think their parents wouldn't have wanted their soldiers to get permission and get on their knees and go on their next mission or go on a less dangerous mission? How insensitive,” he said of the 500 soldiers under Waltz's command.
“We're all old people. We could have retired,” added Herr, who served in the National Guard for 34 years. “We didn't. … And that was his position.”
“And that was his position,” Herr continued. “He didn't care. It was all up to him.”
