As Day 22 unfolds without a media appearance, interview or press conference by either Kamala Harris or Tim Walz, the race to define the two Democrats at the top of the ticket by everyone else continues.

Video clips continue to surface from appearances on C-SPAN and Hardball to radio commercials voiced by Walz himself claiming the rank of Command Sergeant Major, a rank that was conditional based on deployment he refused to accept.

Over the weekend, another incident of alleged stolen valor popped up in regards to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 ceremony on the steps of the state capitol in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The 4-plus hour event held on 9/11/2021 featured speeches by Senator Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, whom I am informed also is a senator of the Gopher State, and the keynote address given by Governor Tim Walz.

The emcee and host of the event was Tom Lyons, a Vietnam Air Force veteran who is the host of Minnesota Military Radio on KROC out of Rochester. Lyons, like most emcees, read the scripted bios of all of the speakers. When it came time for Governor Walz, here's how Lyons introduced him.



Now we get to the speech Gov. Walz actually gave. Online, it's become somewhat of a Rorschach test of what he meant to say. It's worth watching and listening to his words and drawing your own conclusions about what you think he meant to imply. Then, we'll come back and give you context to really muddy it all up.



On first listen, one is left with the impression that he is an Afghanistan war veteran. He compares the feeling of watching the loading of remains on the tarmac at Afghanistan with those in the audience who actually were serving at Bagram in Afghanistan during that long war. 

Of course, the red warning light began flashing because Tim Walz never deployed to Afghanistan in his stint with the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery. In fact, that unit deployed twice in relation to Operation Iraqi Freedom, in and around Iraq, but did not deploy to Afghanistan. That's a problem. 

Of course, Walz chose to leave the Guard earlier than he planned to once he learned that they were likely to deploy to Iraq. It was this earlier-than-anticipated retirement that cost him the command sergeant major rank he's nevertheless traded on dozens of time since leaving military service. Walz' immediate superior officer, Col. John Kolb, has gone on record as to his thoughts about Walz bugging out ahead of schedule.

Tim Walz’s battalion commander and direct supervisor, Colonel John Kolb, shares his thoughts pic.twitter.com/D78ptiVKXH

— Matt Wolking (@MattWolking) August 11, 2024

Again, Walz' service, and the question about his future deployment, had to do with Iraq, not Afghanistan, which is what makes his remarks at the 20th anniversary so troubling. 

As a United States Congressman, Walz did go to Bagram as part of a Congressional delegation, or CODEL, in 2008, and maybe again in 2011. It's possible, his defenders will claim, that he was referring to his CODEL when he was referring about the 'one night on the tarmac' line, and perhaps that is true. But that's distinctly not the impression he left, and it could have and should have been very easily clarified by saying, "As A Congressman, I stood one night on a tarmac at Bagram." But he did not say that. He talked about the period of time when his missed a year of his daughter's life, Hope being two-years-old when he deployed (to Italy), and three-years-old when he returned. Hope was born in 2001. His deployment to Europe would have been in 2003-2004. That's nowhere near Afghanistan, and that's the context with which he was speaking when he made his claim about Bagram. 

To further make his Codel conflation defense a weaker argument, one needs to see not just what Walz said, but the prepared remarks from which he addressed the crowd. That's public information, for now. Walz ad libbed a bit from the text of his prepared remarks when he gave it, perhaps to give himself a little wiggle room, but here's what his speechwriter expected him to say.

In the years after that classroom, I had the privilege of serving in this state's national guard. I stood one night in the dark of night on the tarmac at Bagram Air Base in Iraq and watched a military ramp ceremony–a soldier’s body being loaded onto a plane to be returned home. And if you've seen it, you don't leave the same. It makes you wonder, what are we doing? What are we trying to get to? And then watching as all of you have been, the confusing last few weeks with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

His impromptu lines cut both ways. He talks about successive years being hard on the country. You could make the case that he left years between his actual service and his unspecified CODEL, so he might be talking about a longer period of time between serving in uniform and being on the tarmac as a Congressman. But he also used the timeline of his daughter, which was well before his time in Congress, and a year of her life missed by Walz is a lot longer than a week-long CODEL. He certainly wouldn't have missed her birthday over it. 

There's no ellipses in his prepared remarks to indicate a gap in time between serving in the National Guard and standing on a tarmac at Bagram one night. It's literally the next sentence with no further context. And, of course, "Bagram Air Base in Iraq" will surprise every brave American who served a stint at Bagram Air Base...in Afghanistan. 

And giving Walz the most charity possible in what he meant to say, Walz being at Bagram as part of a CODEL is still not at all the same as wearing the uniform serving in harm's way. He attempted to be sympatico with those who were there, as if he was himself under the same circumstances. He just wasn't, and this is not the first time he's been fast and loose with both his own rhetoric and the attribution of others. 







You'd think somewhere in regime media, a question or two might be posed to Walz about his amorphous service, and maybe a question or two to Kamala Harris about her vetting process, such that there was any, and what else, policy-wise, she's going to steal from Donald Trump's campaign. 

Short of that, what you get instead is regime media complaining to the vice-presidential nominee that actually agreed to do interviews on ABC, CBS, and CNN - J.D. Vance. Vance was called to do the Sunday shows, and he deployed, unlike Walz. The same can be said about their military service in Iraq. Vance deployed, Walz retired early.

This exchange is especially fun to watch, because after arguing with Dana Bash about the stolen valor issue until Bash was cornered, a visibly frustrated Bash immediately pivoted to her safe space - the abortion issue. 



Walz' stolen valor problem has been in the news for a little over a week, and there's no sign it's going away anytime soon, and that's because both he and Harris refuse to address it head-on. It's easy enough to fix, if there's truth behind the story, in a sit-down interview or press conference. Why they won't fix it is anybody's guess, but this fire in the campaign is zero percent contained, it's spreading, and that's before the Middle East descends into wider war right before the Democratic Convention in Chicago next week. 

At some point, Harris and Walz are going to run out of places to hide, and people will realize she's actually is burdened by what has been, that's why she's running from the present in order to steal the future.