Republicans attempt to undermine Harris-Walz campaign by questioning military record and coaching position
Donald Trump’s supporters have seized on misstatements and embellishments by Tim Walz about his past in an effort to depict the Democratic vice-presidential nominee as a serial liar, even amid concerns about the former president’s own track record of lies and untruthful statements.
The Republican focus on Walz has already dredged up potentially misleading descriptions of his military service, which ended nearly 20 years ago, and appears aimed at undermining Kamala Harris’s running mate’s self-proclaimed image as a plain-spoken paragon of normality.
Now the campaign appears to have expanded into more personal – even trivial – areas, including in at least one case, unsubstantiated innuendo about Walz’s character that may be in part driven by a desire to cancel out aspersions aimed at JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.
Walz has characterised Vance and Maga Republicans as “weird” and has also made reference to lewd and baseless online rumours that the GOP vice-presidential once had sex with a couch.
In the latest example of a Republican counteroffensive, Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and radio host with more than 3.3 million followers on X, posted in a now-deleted tweet that “Tim Walz is an all-time legendary liar” in response to another user’s post showing the Democratic candidate’s tweets about his dog, Scout.
The post showed separate tweets by Walz showing him pictured beside two different dogs, but both referred to as “Scout” . Another user responded to Kirk’s claims, writing: “He took photos with other dogs at the dog park.”
It followed a post by Trump on his Truth Social network last Thursday in response to Harris’s presidential acceptance to the Democratic national convention, referring to Walz’s football coaching activities, which have earned him the moniker “Coach Walz.”
“Walz was an assistant coach, not a coach,” Trump wrote.
Two conservative news outlets, Alpha News and the Washington Free Beacon, unearthed an 18-year-old rebuttal from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce & Industry to a claim by Walz that it had given him an award for contributions to the business community.
The claim to have been voted Outstanding Young Nebraskan by the chamber came from Walz’s campaign during his successful 2006 run for Congress. The campaign subsequently amended the record to say that the award had been given by the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce and said the mistake was due to a typing error.
The items were brought to light after Republicans – led by Vance, who has accused his Democratic counterpart of “stolen valour” – highlighted anomalies in Walz’s portrayal of his military service record.
In what was seen as the most serious, the GOP pointed out that Harris’s campaign described Walz as a “retired command sergeant major” in the Minnesota national guard. In fact, although Walz was promoted to the rank before his discharge, he did not complete the coursework to retain it, meaning he actually retired with a lower rank.
The drive to undermine Walz’s 24-year military service has been credited to Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s top aides and a veteran Republican operative who spearheaded the “the Swift Boat campaign” that questioned the Vietnam war record of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in the 2004 presidential election.
The Republicans have also alighted on Walz’s self-description as a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, the codename for the US military offensive in Afghanistan, beginning in 2001. Walz did not serve in Afghanistan itself but was stationed in Italy, like thousands of other military personnel, starting in 2003. He has never claimed to have served in Afghanistan.
Some of Trump’s most vociferous supporters have moved beyond Walz’s military record to impute his character, without evidence.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host whose 2021 interview with Vance elicited the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s notorious “childless cat ladies” comment, called Walz “a weirdo” and “a creeper” in an appearance last week on The Megyn Kelly Show on Sirius XM.
“I lived in a boy’s dorm in a New England boarding school in the 1980s with a lot of guys like Tim Walz,” Carlson told Kelly. “So I saw that guy. I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, I know exactly [who you are], you’re a creeper,’ as we used to call him … There’s something wrong with that guy. He’s a weirdo.”
Carlson then qualified his remarks, saying: “I definitely shouldn’t suggest what I’m suggesting without evidence. I don’t have evidence beyond what I’ve seen.”
