Tim Walz blamed his “grammar” for falsely claiming to carry “weapons of war in war” in his first interview as vice presidential candidate Thursday —and side-stepped questions about lies over his DUI and why he said his children were conceived by IVF.
The Democratic candidate has come under scrutiny for a series of statements from his past which appeared to exaggerate his service record in the National Guard and for his 2006 campaign for Congress, when his spokespeople tried to deny he had been drunk when convicted of a DUI.
In his joint CNN interview with Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, he gave a lengthy answer when asked by the network’s Dana Bash about a claim in 2018 that he carried guns “in war” despite never having been in combat—but never apologized for the claim, which Republicans including his rival JD Vance have called “stolen valor.”
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“A campaign official said that you misspoke. Did you?” the CNN anchor asked.
“First of all, I‘m incredibly proud to have done 24 years of wearing the uniform of this country,” replied Walz, who deployed to Italy in 2003 during the Afghanistan War and didn’t see combat.
“[I’m] equally proud of my service in a public school classroom. Whether it‘s Congress or the governor, my record speaks for itself, but I think people are coming to get to know me. I speak like they do; I speak candidly,” he continued. “I wear my emotions on my sleeves, and I speak especially passionately about our children being shot in schools and around guns. So I think people know me, they know who I am, they know where my heart is. And again, my record has been out there for over 40 years to speak for itself.”
When Bash repeated her question after the lengthy non-answer, he came up with the “grammar” explanation.
“Yeah, I said we were talking about—in this case—this was after a school shooting, the ideas of carrying these weapons of war. And my wife, the English teacher, told me my grammar is not always correct,” he said.
“But again, if it’s not this, it’s an attack on my children for showing love for me, or it’s an attack on my dog,” Walz went on, referencing criticisms of his son Gus’s reaction to his Democratic National Convention speech and a debunked conspiracy about his dog.
“I’m not going to do that. And the one thing I’ll never do is I’ll never demean another member’s service in any way. I never have, and I never will.”
Walz ignored the question over his DUI and sidestepped wrongly saying his daughter and son, now 23 and 17, were conceived by IVF, which the overturning of Roe v. Wade has put in jeopardy in some states, when they were the result of IUI—intra-uterine injection.
“I spoke about our infertility issues because it’s hell and families know this,” he said. “I spoke about the treatments which were available to us. I won't apologize for speaking passionately whether it’s guns in schools or protecting reproductive rights.. I think most Americans get it if you’ve been through that I don’t think they're cutting hairs on IVF or IUI.”
As for his son cheering him on at the DNC, which became a target for trollish attacks led by Ann Coulter, who was followed by multiple conservative radio hosts, the Minnesota governor said it made him feel grateful.
“I don’t know [that] as a father I could have ever imagined that. I’m grateful for so many reasons to be on this ticket, but that moment, to understand what was really important: to have my son feel a sense of pride in me that I was trying to do the right thing,” he said.
“You try and protect your kids, you know, it brings notoriety and things, but it was just such a visceral emotional moment that I’m just I’m grateful I got to experience it, and I’m so proud of him. I’m proud of him. I’m proud of Hope. I’m proud of Gwen,” he added of his daughter and wife, respectively.
While Walz didn’t directly mention the attacks on his son, he said “the era or in our politics can be better.”
“It can be different. We can show some of these things and we can have families involved in this, and I hope people felt that out there, and I hope they hug their kids a little tighter because you just never know, and life can be kind of hard.”
