Who Stole What?

Van Jones: Tim Walz may have been 'loose with his language' on military servicehttps://t.co/unyR1qOdGX

— Raw Story (@RawStory) August 8, 2024

There's a lot of issues," he said. "I'll tell you what there's a photo of him, a 2004 photo of him, where he refers to himself as an Enduring Freedom veteran for [John] Kerry. The problem is, the Department of Defense does not qualify him as someone who is a recipient of an Enduring Freedom title." 

Lanza said Walz either "misrepresented himself" to run for office, or the correction is now. 

"He can't have it both ways," said Lanza. "He can't claim he served in combat and then 20 years later say, 'Oh it's just no big deal.' It goes to character. And that's a problem for the campaign. The fact that we're talking about it and more and more people are talking about it, it's not what Kamala Harris wants to be talking about."

Inconveniently, that’s not what happened:

In a video clip tweeted out by the Harris campaign on Tuesday, Walz tells an audience that he carried guns "in war” while trying to make the case for restrictions on gun access. 

"We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,” Walz said. 

Walz would have carried a gun during his service when the U.S. was at war following the 9/11 terror attacks, including a deployment to Italy in 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. 

But there is no evidence that Walz was ever engaged in active combat, and he has acknowledged as much, according to a 2018 interview with Minnesota Public Radio. 

"I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that," Walz said. "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." 

Still, Vance insists Walz's comment about carrying a gun "in war” and not "during war” is tantamount to stolen valor. 

"What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you're not,” he said. 

Vance is a retired Marine who served in Iraq but wrote in his memoir that he was "lucky to escape any real fighting.” 

"I served in a combat zone. I never said that I saw a firefight myself, but I've always told the truth about my Marine Corps service. That's the difference," Vance said Wednesday.

Walz was deployed in Enduring Freedom. Vance is the source of the claim Walz grossly misrepresented his military experience. Vance “escaped any real fighting” by being a military journalist doing Marine PR. He escaped fighting by never being called upon to fight.

And a 2004 photo caption is proof of “stolen valor”? Really?

Besides, Vance is busy drawing attention to himself:

Your entire time in military leadership we won zero wars. You drank fine wine at bullshit security conferences while thousands of working class kids died on the battlefield. Oh, by the way, how much do you stand to gain financially from a war with Russia, Barry? https://t.co/BSOIhWWkdF

— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 19, 2022

Van Jones is really kinda worthless.