Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) blasted Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) for peddling “stolen valor garbage,” citing that Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate “abandoned” his unit just before it was deployed to Iraq.
“As a marine who served his country in uniform, when the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America, asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it,” Vance said during an event in Michigan on Wednesday. “I did it honorably, and I’m very proud of that service.”
“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him, a fact he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with,” he continued.
Vance enlisted in the Marines after high school and was deployed to Iraq in 2005 with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, and he served as a combat correspondent.
He finished his enlistment in 2007 as a corporal decorated with the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal.
Walz and Harris have praised the Minnesota governor’s time in the Army National Guard, in which he retired as a master sergeant in 2005 just before his battalion was deployed to Iraq, which Walz said he did to focus on running for Congress.
“I think it’s shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to make a promise that you’re gonna follow through, and then to drop out right before you actually have to go,” Vance said on Wednesday. “I also think it’s dishonest.”
Walz has also attempted to use his service to call for gun control.
“We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are allowed,” Walz said.
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“I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?” Vance said. “What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq?”
“He has not spent a day in a combat zone. What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not,” he added.