"We have to call out bad faith attacks": Democrats rebut attempted GOP "swift boating" of Tim Walz

Democratic lawmakers and organizers who once served in the U.S. military characterized GOP attacks on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's military record as "unfounded" and "morally bankrupt" on a Thursday press call organized by the Democratic National Committee.

Republicans have been pushing the false line that Walz, who served in the National Guard for 24 years, abandoned his unit as it was being deployed to Iraq, with Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, characterizing his service as "stolen valor garbage."

Such attacks don't hold up to scrutiny, according to Rep. Jake Auchinschloss, D-Mass., who pointed out that Walz, who won multiple decorations and received praise from fellow officers, made the decision to retire from the National Guard months before his unit received its deployment notification.

Walz's retirement was finalized in May 2005, two months prior to the deployment notification in July 2005, and nearly a year before his former unit went to Iraq in March 2006. Its probable that he made the decision to retire and filed his paperwork months earlier, having filed his intent to run for Congress back in February 2006.

"Typically, processing time ranges from 60 to 180 days for retirement requests based on the selected date of retirement,” said a U.S. Army Human Resources Command official in 2023, discussing such requests from reserve members.

"I think we saw twenty years ago with the swift boating of John Kerry that we cannot presume that unfounded attacks will implode under their own lies, so we have to call out bad faith attacks and show them that we are not going to be pliant about this," Auchinschloss continued. The GOP effort to paint Kerry as a liar about his own military service in Vietnam was headed by Republican operative Chris LaCivita, who is now co-campaign manager in Donald Trump's campaign.

Auchinschloss said that it's especially rich that the attacks would come from Republicans supporting former President Donald Trump, who took five deferments during the Vietnam War and "has a record of disparaging veterans and throwing them under the bus for political gain."

Republicans are also accusing Walz of lying about his record, highlighting a speech in which he expressed his wish to "make sure that weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war." Walz did not serve in a combat zone, but did provide base protection and participate in training missions and other support operations for the war in Afghanistan while stationed in Europe. If Walz used potentially ambiguous language in that instance, he also on numerous other occasions shared careful details of his service, noting that he did not deploy to Iraq and saying that "there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that."

Veterans now working as organizers for the Harris-Walz campaign said they are angry at these Republican attacks and emphasized that all military service is important and commendable. Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colorado, suggested that Trump's allies are disparaging Walz because they "have no ideas and no vision for the future, so all they can do is attack and lie and twist and contort and it shows the country their complete lack of leadership."

The call also discussed President Joe Biden and former president Trump's respective records on veterans affairs, as well as the PACT Act, which Biden signed into law in 2022 and expands the scope of benefits eligibility for American veterans.