The campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris has updated its online bio of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
They removed reference to Walz as a ‘retired command sergeant major’ and now say he once served at the command sergeant rank.
Walz retired from 24 years in the National Guard in 2005 to run for Congress. He did serve as a command sergeant major, but was reverted back to master sergeant as he left the military because he had not completed the coursework for the higher rank.
‘The son of an Army veteran and a retired Command Sergeant Major in the Army National Guard himself, Walz was the ranking member on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, where he passed legislation to help stem veterans’ suicides,’ the campaign website read as of Wednesday.
Now, that line begins with: ‘The son of an Army veteran who served as a command sergeant major….’
Walz retired from the Guard just two months before his unit deployed to Iraq – a fact his Republican detractors have seized on.
They’ve also accused him of inflating his credentials by calling himself a ‘retired command sergeant major.’
It’s not the first time the matter has come up. During his 2018 race for governor, two retired command sergeant majors wrote a paid letter to the editor accusing Walz of misrepresenting his rank on the campaign trail.
‘Walz attained the rank of command sergeant major and served in that role but retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes due to not completing additional coursework,’ Army public affairs officer Lt. Col. Kristen Augé said in a past statement to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
In 2003, Walz deployed to Italy in a support position of active military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan but not to a combat zone himself.
Amid his congressional bid in March 2005, the Walz campaign put out a statement signaling he still planned to stay in the race despite a possible mobilization of Minnesota National Guard soldiers to Iraq. According to the Guard, Walz retired from service in May of that year.
In August 2005, the Department of the Army issued a mobilization order for Walz’s unit. The unit mobilized in October of that year before it deployed to Iraq in March 2006.
Shortly after Harris announced Walz as her VP pick, a 2018 clip of Walz advocating for gun control resurfaced.
‘We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,’ Walz said at the time. Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance said he felt Walz’s implication that he had served in combat was ‘stolen valor garbage.’
Reports quickly resurfaced of anger among his former brothers in arms who accused him of ‘betraying’ his country just as they were preparing for deployment.
Retired Command Sergeant Major Thomas Behrends of the Minnesota National Guard accused Walz of having ’embellished’ his record and of having abandoned his unit when he left the Guard to run for Congress.
‘In early 2005, a warning order was issued to the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion, which included the position he was serving in, to prepare to be mobilized for active duty for a deployment to Iraq,’ he wrote on Facebook in 2018.
‘On May 16th, 2005, he quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war.’
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2014 as a Naval intelligence officer, said the criticism was ‘strategic’ because the Trump campaign ‘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.’
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., a former Marine Corps infantry officer who deployed to Afghanistan, told NBC News: ‘If I were Donald Trump, with five deferments from Vietnam … I would be very cautious about opening the door to attacks on those who served honorably.’
Neither Trump nor Harris served in the military. Trump received a series of deferments in the Vietnam War, including one with a physician’s letter stating that he suffered bone spurs in his feet.