Sen. J.D. Vance’s evidence-free accusation that his Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, dodged serving in the Iraq War has earned not only fact-checks but condemnation by veterans groups and former Vice President Mike Pence’s one-time chief of staff.
While in Michigan on Wednesday, Vance claimed that Walz—who served in his home state’s national guard for 24 years and deployed to Italy as part of the U.S. war in Afghanistan before retiring in 2005—abandoned his unit, and even asserted that Walz had “stolen valor.” The attack had been used against Walz in both his 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial campaigns, which he won.
Several publications soon corrected the record. As noted by CNN, it was two months after Walz retired in 2005 to run for Congress when his former unit received orders to deploy. Nevertheless, right-wing commentators have insisted on pushing the baseless claim, as Media Matters for America pointed out.
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The criticism of Walz’s record didn’t go over well with some veterans groups. VoteVets, a progressive veterans advocacy group, promptly fired back at Vance, a Marine who deployed to Iraq once for about six months.
“JD Vance attacking another Veteran holds no honor and no semblance of reality. This is a blatant, baseless, and abhorrent attack. Shame on him,” the group wrote on X, followed shortly by a “fiction versus facts” graphic reiterating what CNN and others had fact-checked.
That sentiment was echoed later by Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Pence, whose one-time job Vance hopes to attain.
Short, appearing on MSNBC’s José Díaz-Balart Reports Wednesday morning, doubted the strength of Vance’s line of criticism.
“J.D. Vance served in the Marines. He’s entitled to make that attack. But I do think that in the last three weeks, there has been an enormous upheaval in all of this and the polls. But prior to Biden withdrawing, one of the biggest vulnerabilities for Democrats was the border and the economy, and I think that’s still the case,” he said.
“I think that, unfortunately, much of the Trump campaign continues to be personal, whether or not it is questioning Kamala Harris’ heritage, or this attack, or frankly going to Georgia and deciding to attack a very popular Republican governor,” he continued.
“So, I think that Harris and Walz have enormous vulnerabilities in their records in the progressive positions they have taken, and I think a policy attack would be more effective than the personal attacks that have been transpiring.”
Vance’s claim that Walz was “dishonest” about his service also spurred a response from the Harris-Walz campaign.
“In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times,” a spokesperson told CNN. “Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country – in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.”
