J.D. Vance’s ‘Stolen Valor’ Claim Against Tim Walz Is Total B.S.

Nikki McCann Ramirez
·5 min read
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There’s very little the two men running to be the nation’s next vice president have in common, but the one thing they do share is a history of military service.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who as of Tuesday is running alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, served for 24 years as a member of the Army National Guard after voluntarily enlisting at the age of 17. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), former President Donald Trump’s running mate, served for four years as a member of the Marines.

On Wednesday, Vance took a swing at Walz over his military record, repeating viral claims that Walz had “dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him” to Iraq. Vance described Walz’s military record as “stolen valor garbage.”

As a member of the Army National Guard, Walz helped respond to major natural disasters, worked in firearm and artillery training, received commendations as a prolific sharpshooter, and was sent to Italy to support U.S. operations in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. In 2005, Walz ended his military career to pursue a successful run for Congress, he retired honorably with a slew of awards and medals and the rank of master sergeant — an administrative downgrade from command sergeant major, which he had been promoted to earlier in the year but had not completed training for.

Vance’s claim that Walz abandoned his unit to avoid deployment to Iraq — which has been echoed throughout the right — was directly countered by Army Lt. Col. Ryan Rossman, director of operations for the Minnesota National Guard, who spoke to HuffPost.

The unit “received an alert order for mobilization to Iraq on July 14, 2005,” Rossman said, two months after Walz retired. According to CNN, Walz first filed his paperwork to run for Congress in January of that same year, and — as several veterans have noted — the administrative process of a military retirement typically takes several months before approval. His unit would not deploy to Iraq until March 2006.

Vance also accused Walz of feigning a record in active combat: “[Walz] said — and he was making a point about gun control — he said, ‘We shouldn’t allow weapons that I used in war to be on America’s streets.’ Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when you ever in war?”

The senator actually misquoted Walz in his screed. In the clip Vance was referencing, Walz says that he “carried” weapons of war, not that he “used” them, and that “in war is the only place where those weapons are at.” Given that Operation Enduring Freedom was a part of the post-9/11 War on Terror, and that Walz was deployed to Italy under it and likely had a service weapon, the claim that he is engaging in “stolen valor” holds little water.

Vance spoke on Wednesday as if he served more honorably than Walz, noting that he went to Iraq. “I did it, I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably,” he said The senator was deployed for six months in Iraq as a combat correspondent in 2005 as part of the Marines’ Public Affairs office. He — like Walz — never engaged in active combat and has stated that he was “lucky to escape any real fighting” during his deployment.

Walz has spoken at length about his service in the past, and it’s not the first time his political opponents have attempted to diminish his service. The claim that Walz abandoned his unit to avoid fighting in Iraq was leveled against him in 2018 and 2022, during his campaigns for the governorship and reelection, largely by former state Sen. Scott Jensen and Thomas Behrends, a former National Guardsman who was deployed to Iraq after Walz’s retirement.

In 2022, former battalion commander Joseph Eustice, who served with Walz, told the Star Tribune that the accusations against Walz stemmed from ill-informed or “sour-grapes” soldiers who were passed over for promotions. “He was a great soldier,” Eustice told the Tribune. “When he chose to leave, he had every right to leave … The man did nothing wrong when he chose to leave the service; he didn’t break any rules.”

In 2018, Al Bonnifield, who served under Walz in the Guard, told MPR News that Walz “talked with us for quite a while on that subject [of retiring]. He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy. He loved the military, he loved the Guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”

Walz told the outlet that “once you’re in, it’s hard to retire. Of my 40 years or 41 years, I had been in the military 24 of them. It was just what you did … So that transition period was just a challenge.

“I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that,” Walz added. “I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI Bill to leadership opportunities to everything else.”

Twenty-four years of service is nothing to sneeze at, and Vance is running alongside a known draft dodger who has repeatedly disparaged veterans and Gold Star families. If Vance wants to critique a man’s honor, he should start with his running mate.

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