Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign asked Gov. Tim Walz about his military record during the vetting process, and they knew the Republican attacks were coming — Walz told them as much.
“We were ready for it,” said one source close to the campaign. “We’ve been pretty clear about the actual facts of all of this.”
Walz, in a more than two-hour-long interview with Harris’ vetting team last week, answered questions about his time in the Army National Guard and warned the campaign that his military record could be fodder for GOP attacks.
“We knew he served. We knew people tried to make it an issue before, but we knew his answer,” said Cedric Richmond, co-chair of the Harris-Walz campaign who aided Vice President Kamala Harris in her running mate search.
“He was open and honest about it. He said, ‘This is what people will try to say, but here are the facts.’ And we deal in the world of facts. So Trump lies and distorts, and we believe the American people will hear facts.”
The attacks quickly followed after Harris announced Walz. Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, accused Walz of avoiding deployment in Iraq and exaggerating his own service.
“He has not spent a day in a combat zone,” Vance told reporters (Vance, also a veteran, has written that he did not face combat when deployed to Iraq as a military journalist), referencing Walz’s speech during his first rally on the presidential ticket. Walz called out Republicans on gun control by saying: “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.”
Vance extended the attack on Walz to his time of retirement.
“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,” Vance also said.
Walz served 24 years in the National Guard, where he was deployed to Italy in 2003 as part of the support team for the war in Afghanistan. Though he trained with “weapons of war,” he was never deployed to an active war zone. He ultimately retired in 2005 and ran for Congress. He reached the rank of command sergeant major, but having not finished relevant training, retired a rank below as a master sergeant.
On Wednesday, the campaign updated Walz’s biography to reflect that Walz served as a command sergeant major instead of the previous language that said he was a “retired command sergeant major.”
The governor’s official website for the state of Minnesota lists his higher rank at the time of retirement: “After 24 years in the Army National Guard, Command Sergeant Major Walz retired from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in 2005,” the biography read as of Thursday evening.
This is not the first time Walz’s time in the military has come under scrutiny; people close to the Harris campaign noted that these attacks have occurred in nearly every election the former congressman has run.
“Republicans have tried this again and again. The man keeps winning over and over,” said the source close to the campaign. “I don’t think anybody here is, like, freaking out about this.”
But the personal accusations waged by Vance have set off a slew of negative headlines questioning Walz’s record. Republicans across the party quickly jumped onto Vance’s talking points. Trump strategist Chris LaCivita, who helped lead the infamous “swift boat” accusations against John Kerry in 2004, drew the comparisons.
Democrats came to the defense of Walz, including Treasury Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a veteran.
“Tim Walz served honorably and well,” he posted on X. “Again, this is strategic: team Trump needs us tied up in debates over pre-retirement conditional rank promotions because they are desperate NOT to discuss their (unpopular) policies, like tax cuts for the rich and banning access to abortion.”
And on Thursday, Harris herself weighed in to defend her running mate. “Listen, I praise anyone who has presented themselves to serve our country. And I think that we all should,” she said on the tarmac in Michigan, according to reporters traveling.
Still, some in the party are hoping the moment will fade quickly.
“I hope and trust that the Democrats are going to do better now,” said one longtime Democratic operative.
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Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS.