The Trump campaign Wednesday released a letter signed by 50 Republican lawmakers who are military veterans that criticizes vice presidential candidate Tim Walz for what they called “egregious misrepresentations” of his time in uniform.
“To be blunt, when you falsely claim military service that did not happen and abandon your post, you diminish the real sacrifices made by veterans who did serve in combat,” reads the letter, whose signatories include Florida Rep. Brian Mast, chairman of the Veterans and Military Families for Trump coalition.
The letter is part of a sustained attack by the Trump campaign — spearheaded by Sen. JD Vance, the vice presidential candidate and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran — on the military service record of Walz, who served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress.
Republicans have lambasted Walz for retiring in May 2005, two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. The letter accuses Walz of “abandoning the men and women under your leadership just as they were getting ready to deploy,” calling his decision to leave the service “not honorable.”
“When America asked you to lead your troops into War, you turned your back on your troops,” it says. “You have violated the trust of our brothers and sisters in arms. … Until you admit you lied to them, there is no way you can be trusted to serve as Vice President.”
The letter also highlights Walz’s characterization of his military rank, which critics say he exaggerated for political gain.
The Minnesota governor achieved the rank of command sergeant major, one of the Army’s highest enlisted ranks, but retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework required to keep the higher title. His governor’s biography website calls him “Command Sergeant Major Walz,” and his and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign site says he rose to that rank.
The letter writers include Rep. Darrell Issa, who represents portions of San Diego and Riverside counties; Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, and Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who served as secretary of the interior under Trump.
Vance, who has repeatedly accused Walz of “stolen valor,” doubled down on his attacks in a speech this week in a Philadelphia speech in which he joked that, “before the end of the campaign, Tim Walz is going to be talking about how he was carrying an M16 through the jungles of Vietnam.”
“The closest Tim Walz has ever come to combat … is when he let rioters burn Minneapolis to the ground” after the police murder of George Floyd, said Vance, who was deployed to Iraq for six months in 2005 and did not see combat.
Walz addressed the scrutiny over his service during a speech to union workers in Los Angeles last week.
“I am damn proud of my service to this country,” Walz said, “and I firmly believe that you should never denigrate another person’s service record. For anyone who put on that uniform for our great country, including my opponent, I just have a few simple words: Thank you for your service and sacrifice.”
The military service of the vice presidential candidates — as well as Trump’s lack of it — has been a frequent theme during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week.
Trump never served in the military, and a string of deferments enabled him to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War. After graduating high school from the New York Military Academy in 1964, he received four education deferments to attend college.
In 1968, at age 22, he got a medical deferment for having bone spurs in his heels.
In a speech about reproductive rights at the Democratic convention on Tuesday night, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Army veteran who lost both her legs while serving in Iraq, called Trump “old Cadet Bone Spurs.”
“I went to war to protect America’s rights and freedoms, so I take it personally when a five-time draft dodging coward like Donald Trump tries to take away my rights and freedoms in return,” Duckworth said.
Trump in recent days has been criticized for saying the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, is “much better” than the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, because its recipients “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”
