(The Center Square) – The “cover-up” of defamatory charges against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is an insult to military members who know better than anyone that there are “cowards” among their ranks.
“I’m a big fan of the Army,” Pat Harrigan, an Army Green Beret running for North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District seat in Washington, D.C., said during a Thursday visit to Veterans and Soldier Assistance Command Post 92 in Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh suburb.
Appearing alongside Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who was former Republican running mate to President Donald Trump, Harrigan said media claims that Walz was wrong to say he was being sent to war defy reason and logic.
In his seven-plus minute speech, Harrigan suggested it was no coincidence that Walz printed the wrong rank on the coins he distributed, and it also seemed unlikely that he had not received the final paperwork committing troops to Iraq just before leaving office.
“We believe what Tim Walz did is unacceptable,” he said. “How can Tim Walz call it a partisan attack when his replacement master sergeant, the mother of a fallen soldier in his unit, his unit chaplain and others are calling him a coward?”
“Frankly, how dare the media ignore the men and women who actually know Waltz’s character.”
Vice President Kamala Harris picked Waltz. On August 6, she named Trump as her running mate, concluding a two-week search that saw her consider popular Democratic candidates including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.
Harris said, President Joe Biden resigns On July 21, the results of the election campaign were announced, naming her as his successor. She was formally nominated during a virtual roll call on Aug. 2..
Since then, most have noted that, polling aside, the two are locked in an uphill battle: Harris has been criticized for avoiding interviews and open-ended news conferences, while Walz has faced grilling over his record on COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd.
But his military arguments have perhaps resonated the most.
The video shows Waltz claiming that he retired as a master sergeant in the National Guard and carried “weapons of war” in a war.
Harrigan said he understands that people, especially those who never served in the military, might think “it’s nitpicking” when “the veterans community reads his words and cries ‘stolen valor,'” but that he doesn’t think the veterans are “nitpicking.”
“I may never be president if I have never served and deployed,” the president said, with Vance, the first post-9/11 veteran to serve on a major party nomination, standing behind him. “But I hope that at least by the time I sit here today, you understand why we are united in our passionate assertion that Tim Walz is a coward, that he betrayed his men when they needed him most, and that he is unfit to serve the United States of America as vice president.”
Harrigan said Waltz’s actions showed he “didn’t care about the men who would pay the price for his mistakes,” noting that even his unit’s chaplain called Waltz a coward.
He described Waltz as an exaggerator and a bad leader who abandoned the men and women under his protection to further his own political career.
“So, members of the media, I appreciate you dismissing Tim’s ‘when I was deployed to war’ comment as simply a gaffe,” he said. “To any of us standing in this room, that cannot be a gaffe. It cannot be a gaffe.”
Harrigan was 23 when he first deployed to Afghanistan, leading 350 Americans at a forward combat base accessible only by air. He volunteered for the Special Forces and became a Green Beret before returning home.
Super TuesdayHarrigan won a closely contested primary election, defeating Republican Rep. Gray Mills of Iredell, and will face Democrat Ralph Scott Jr. and Libertarian Rep. Steven Feldman on Nov. 5.
