'He wasn’t kicking down doors': Ex-GOP rep responds to Vance’s attack on Walz’s military record

07 August 2024

When Vice President Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her presidential running mate, it didn't take long for Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and other far-right MAGA Republicans long to start attacking him.

One of Vance's lines of attack has been disparaging Walz's military service, and he's being called out for it by conservative former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) as well as progressive ex-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan.

The Minnesota governor and former congressman spent 24 years in the U.S. Army National Guard before retiring from the military as a command sergeant major.

In a January 7 post on X, formerly Twitter, Vance wrote, "You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz? When the US Marine Corps asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, he dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him. I think that's shameful."

In response, the 46-year-old Kinzinger — who served as a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard — tweeted, "Ok. JD served honorably, but he wasn't kicking down doors. He was in public affairs. Which again, is fine and honorable. Tim, after he was eligible for retirement, retired. People do that. If it was a real problem he would have been 'stop lossed' and prevented from retiring."

A Never Trump conservative, Kinzinger is still a Republican but has endorsed Harris for president in the 2024 election.

One of the key figures on Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign is Chris LaCivita, a veteran GOP strategist who engineered the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

In a biting August 7 tweet, Hasan posted, "1. They are trying to 'Swift Boat' Tim Walz. 2. Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard. 3. Vance went to Iraq as a 'combat correspondent', or military journalist. He did PR for the Marines. 4. DONALD TRUMP HAD FAKE BONE SPURS TO DODGE THE DRAFT!"

Two other journalists weighed in as well: New York Times contributors Elizabeth Spiers and Jamelle Bouie. On the social media platform Bluesky, Spiers argued: "Vance suggesting that Walz isn't veteran enough because he didn't see combat is pretty rich given that Walz served in the military for 24 years and Vance served for 4, and is also a running mate to a draft dodger…. Also, Vance was a military correspondent/desk jockey. Anytime he complains that Walz wasn't in combat, someone should respond 'neither were you.'"

And Bouie wrote, "It's wild because the argument also seems to be that because Walz 'deserted his unit' because the guard gave him his retirement at the start of 2005 and his unit deployed at the end of the year, when Walz almost certainly put in for retirement in 2004."

Bouie also posted: "My dad was a W-3 in the navy, offered a promotion to W-4, decided he didn’t want to move to Okinawa with one kid about to go to college and the other about to start high school, and put in for retirement!"

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