The NPR Politics Podcast - What To Know About Tim Walz's 24-Year Military Career

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

In 2018, Tim Walz said he carried weaponry "in war" when pushing for gun control, despite never serving in combat. He also said he chose to retire from the military after 24 years, shortly before his unit deployed to Iraq, in order to focus on his run for Congress.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence, and senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, I'm Mitch. Hi, I'm Gary. And I'm Mason. And we're currently standing in front of a waterfall at Shenandoah National Park. This podcast was recorded at... 1240 p.m. on Monday, August 12th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. But we may still be in this park.

Enjoy the show! Are they implying they might get lost in the beautiful Shenandoah Forest? Easily done. Yes. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Quill Lawrence.

I cover veterans of the VA. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. Today on the pod, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz served 24 years in the National Guard. Now he's Vice President Harris's running mate, and his military record quickly came under political attack. We are going to sort through the facts and also what it means for the campaign. And, Quill, let's start with you. When he did retire from the National Guard, Walz was quite senior. Right. He had made it to command sergeant major.

He did 24 years in the Guard, including a reenlistment after 9-11, but he never went to war. He served in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. So he went to Europe, to Italy, supporting troops that had probably been deployed to Afghanistan. J.D. Vance spent six months uneventfully on a base in Iraq, also didn't see combat. He was a military journalist. Neither of these men are claiming to be war heroes. But then last week, some video from 2018 surfaced where Walz was actually talking about gun control. But we can do background checks. We can do CDC research. We can make sure we don't have reciprocal carry among states. And we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons were at. So that definitely sounds like he said that I carried in war, but he did not go to war. Exactly. It's one preposition, but the campaign put this out

and Vance pounced on it and even accused walls of stolen valor, which is a very serious allegation with a legal definition that this comes nowhere near meeting. And since then, we've just seen a lot of people taking a fine-tooth comb to Walsh's public statements and finding spots, for example, where someone misidentified him as having been to Afghanistan and he didn't correct them, or he was speaking on C-SPAN and the crawl beneath his speaking says he's an Afghanistan vet and he didn't correct them. Now he was speaking on C-SPAN and the crawl beneath his speaking says he's an Afghanistan vet and he didn't correct them. Now, as recently as last month, before he was even picked, he was on CNN with Jake Tapper and Tapper said, you served in Afghanistan and he did correct

him. It's not that Walls has a history of misrepresenting his military service, but there are definitely some instances where he, by omission or in this one case, by saying weapon I carried in war instead of saying maybe in wartime, has tripped him up. And we should say that the Harris campaign on Friday released a statement saying that Walls misspoke, that he's not claiming that. Yes, exactly. They've said that, but it does seem like this issue is sticking around. There are several other points of interest that people are starting to point out. There's some confusion about Walls' rank when he retired. He was a command sergeant

major, which is a very high rank as a non-commissioned officer, but because he hadn't filled out some academic requirements when he did retire, he was administratively changed back down to master sergeant. This was not a punitive demotion, but the Harris campaign has also changed some language on their website to say he is not a retired command sergeant major, although it's true to say he did serve as a command sergeant major. Ron, in the week-long rollout of Tim Walz as Kamala Harris's running mate, this is the one thing that has sort of stuck, where the conversation has lingered. Part of what's going on here is that there is a person who runs the Trump campaign who has had pretty significant success with a similar sort of attack in the past.

That's right. We're talking about Chris LaCivita back in 2004. Chris LaCivita was the man behind a campaign called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to question the military record of John Kerry was a decorated veteran of the Navy who had three Purple Hearts and two other commendations and was running largely as a war hero, even though he had far greater notice back in that era as an anti-war activist, a military, a former military person who was turned against the Vietnam War. That's when he really got his first national attention, testifying before Congress in 1971. But swift-boated became a verb. You know, it is like a political attack that goes directly at your strength has become, that is a phrase in politics. Yes, it's part of the dictionary now, and it refers to a spurious attack that nonetheless undercuts some part of a particular candidate's appeal. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, area of Tim Walz's resume that is coming under some attack or questioning. And that is when he decided to retire. It was during the Iraq war. Can you put it into context for us and what the charges and what else was going on? Yeah.

So Tim Walz had been back from his deployment to Europe. He had been talking with people about running for Congress at the time. And he retired two months before the first notice that his unit was likely to be deployed to Iraq. It was 10 months before they actually went to Iraq. So there was plenty of time to replace him. This is the really important charge because people are saying that he knew Iraq was coming and then he stepped aside and didn't go. So some people have been using words like abandonment or something like desertion, which again has a legal definition that this is nowhere near. But the questions around this are sticking around because people who went in his

unit to Iraq, which turned out to be a very grueling deployment south of Baghdad, and there are people from that unit who are willing to come out and say Walls should have stuck around. Now, that charge has been around in every race that Walls has ever run, including his last race in 2022. But basically, it's clear that Walls had an interest in running for Congress, that he had put in his papers for the air. They pretty much knew they were going to Iraq. The question really is whether Walls had a right after 24 years in the Guard and a re-enlistment after 9-11, whether him deciding not to go to Iraq at that time was acceptable, as some members of his National Guard unit have said, or whether this is somehow something people can criticize. And certainly there are plenty of people who are on social media right now who are taking up the task for it. Yeah. And social media may not entirely be real life. I'm curious what you are hearing from veterans, veterans groups. You've been reporting on the story for several days now.

What has bubbled up? Yeah, I mean, it seems really to depend on where you are politically. I've seen a very few independents in the veteran space saying, well, I wasn't decided and now this is going to sway me. I mean, how many undecided people are there left in this country at this point? But if military service is your issue, there are others pointing out that J.D. Vance served in the Marines, but the top of that ticket, former President Trump got three deferments and avoided going to Vietnam. So there are people weighing in on either side politically. Veterans groups are not weighing in. Mostly, I think out of a maybe disgust that this issue of service is getting politicized, they disgust that this issue of service is getting

politicized, they will say that any kind of service should be respected and not something that gets dragged through the mud around campaign time. Well, and Ron, at this point in our country, military service is so rare. Such a small portion of the American population volunteers to serve the country. And yet this is becoming this sort of political fight. This is not something that really came bubbling up from members of the Minnesota National Guard, particularly. This is something that, as we said earlier, has become actually a verb in the political lexicon, swift voting. Look for something that you can make a fuss about. And even if it's utterly debunked, it's out there and it denigrating service members, saying that he prefers people who weren't captured or there are sort of a long line.

Insulting a war hero like John McCain or reportedly telling his chief of staff, John Kelly, that these people were losers and suckers for having gone to war. Again, if the military is your issue, it's hard to see how you could criticize Walz, but not criticize former President Trump. And yet, lo and behold, people are certainly doing just that. One thing that I will note is that early in Walz's rollout as the running mate, Harris and the campaign were playing up his military service, his time in the National Guard, those 24 years. By the end of the week, she didn't even mention it in one of her speeches in talking about Walls. And really, the campaign is leaning in on Tim Walls, the teacher and the coach. And really, like, now they've got signs

that say coach. And it's not clear to me that they were ever planning to run on him as as large. Yeah. Ron, do you have a sense of whether any of this matters in this race or could matter in the end. We have the example of 2004 when John Kerry's momentum certainly was damaged by the swift boating. And even though the facts came out and even though it didn't look like it was that big a deal in the long run, it stuck around and it changed the dynamic in the month of August and going into September, going into the first debate. That really mattered. So that was a very close election, 2004, pretty much came down to Ohio. Ohio was not a walk away for either candidate. So it can matter in a close race.

And you never know really what changed the chemistry in the way that the candidates related to each other and how people were relating to them. But I think it is a well-established political science fact that in the end, people vote for the top of the ticket one way or the other. All right. We'll leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Quill Lawrence. I cover veterans in the VA. And I'm Ron Elby, editor-correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.