A look at claims made by GOP US Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida during DNC

CHICAGO — For the second straight day, a Floridian has served as former President Donald Trump’s chief counterprogramming surrogate in Chicago, where the main news has been emanating from the Democratic National Committee.

On Tuesday, it was Rep. Byron Donalds, who held a news conference at Trump International Hotel & Tower on the Chicago River, focusing on Trump’s argument about crime.

Today, it was Rep. Michael Waltz, a former Army Green Beret, whose mission was to attack the record of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — and President Joe Biden — on foreign policy.

Waltz dismissed Harris’ candidacy as a “halo-effect campaign that tries to reinvent her as distanced from the terrible failures” of Biden’s administration on foreign policy.

Waltz spotlighted the three-year anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which Biden had ordered. The withdrawal was widely seen as chaotic for Americans and Afghanis alike, and it led to a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians at Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate.

“The moral injury, not only to those families, but to every veteran — all of us who sacrificed so much time, treasure and lives — (is something) that I think about every day,” Waltz said. “It’s one thing to lose your men or women in combat. That happens, but to lose it due to incompetence and to literally idiotic and asinine decision-making out of that White House is something we as a veterans community ... will never let them forget she owns it.”

Waltz also questioned the Biden administration’s approach to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“Is it in our national interest to expel every single Russian from every inch of Ukrainian soil?” Waltz asked. “Is that realistic, with (heavily Russian) Crimea and eastern Ukraine, or is it in our national interest to stop the war? I think President Trump will be very focused on stopping the war, rather than just this — Biden’s current non-strategy, which is a stalemate.”

Waltz also asserted that “terrorism is on the march again” under Biden and Harris.

“You didn’t see spy balloons hovering over our nuclear bomber sites, our nuclear command-and-control sites and our stealth facilities under Donald Trump. You saw it for days on end under Biden and Harris.”

However, the claim of no Chinese balloons found under Trump— one that Waltz also made at the Republican National Convention last month — isn’t accurate, PolitiFact concluded. During a Feb. 4, 2023, news briefing after such balloons were publicly revealed, a senior defense official told reporters that People’s Republic of China government surveillance balloons had “transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration,” and retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck said the U.S. had failed to detect them at the time.

Waltz also accused Biden and Harris of having an administration “that is more worried about base renaming, pronouns, and Chinese-made solar panels on the Pentagon.” and he repeated an assertion from the Republican convention that the U.S. government is “investing research and development dollars to the tunes of millions in electric tanks.”

PolitiFact found that the tank claim is inaccurate. A 2022 U.S. Army climate strategy document outlined a strategy to transition to “fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050.” Tactical vehicles carry troops or fuel; they are different from combat vehicles such as tanks, which the strategy document does not mention. Army spokesperson Ellen Lovett told PolitiFact in 2023 that the Army is focusing strategy on tactical wheeled vehicles, not tanks.

Painting the U.S. under Biden and Harris as weak, Waltz charged that Putin had invaded Georgia under President George W. Bush, Crimea under President Barack Obama, and Ukraine under Biden — yet “didn’t invade anyone under Trump, because deterrence was established and worked.”

However, experts have told PolitiFact that similar claims are oversimplifications.

“American presidents have scant control over foreign decisions about war and peace unless they show their willingness to commit American power,” said Richard Betts, a Columbia University professor emeritus of war and peace studies and of international and public affairs.

Richard Arnold, a Muskingum University associate political science professor, told PolitiFact that Trump couldn’t have prevented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “without simply selling out the Ukrainians and giving Putin what he wanted, or putting American armed forces in Ukraine.”

Under Biden, the U.S. “hit the Russians with just about every non-military means of crippling their country and so far it has not worked,” he said.

“This seems more like a talking point on which (Trump) can never be called because you can’t get evidence either way,” Arnold added.

Waltz also repeated criticism from Trump and his supporters questioning the military bona fides of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ choice as a running mate. He rapped Walz for having implied that he carried weapons in a war zone. PolitiFact has said this criticism of Walz is accurate.

“He should be proud of his service,” Waltz said. “He says he’s proud of his service. Why do you have to lie about it?”

Waltz released a letter signed by several dozen House Republicans who served in the military that was critical of Walz’s portrayal of his service.

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