Walz targeted by more false 'stolen valor' claims

"Caught in serious stolen valor yet again. There is now more than 20 cases of Tampon Tim claiming he was in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq when he never even traveled to either country," says a September 1, 2024 X post from InfoWars founder Alex Jones.

The post, which references a meme criticizing the Minnesota governor for signing a law providing free menstrual products to school students, includes a video in which Walz says: "When I was in Afghanistan, you know what our troops were worried about? They were worried about their families' health care and their pensions."

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Screenshots from X taken September 5, 2024

Several other conservative media personalities also shared the clip across Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

After President Joe Biden announced in July that he would not seek reelection and endorsed Kamala Harris, the vice president chose Walz as her running mate in the November election. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his supporters have since ramped up criticism of the Democratic ticket, triggering a wave of misinformation.

Walz, 60, enlisted in the National Guard when he was 17 and served 24 years in domestic and overseas deployments before ending his career in 2005 to run for Congress, where he spent a dozen years in the House of Representatives. The veteran has been targeted by a slew of attacks on his military record, including debunked claims that he abandoned his unit after it was directed to deploy to Iraq.

The latest posts are similarly false -- the full video shows Walz never claims to have fought in the war, instead referencing a congressional trip to Afghanistan.

A reverse image search reveals the footage shared online comes from a speech Walz gave to the American Legion at the Washington Conference Commanders Call on February 28, 2012 (archived here and here).

In the full video, the speaker who introduces Walz highlights the Afghanistan trip he took in October 2011. A report on the US Army's website details the visit and mentions Walz as part of a congressional delegation (archived here).

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Screenshot of the US Army website taken September 5, 2024, with elements highlighted by AFP

Here are some of the speaker's remarks introducing Walz:

"Last fall he made a trip to visit our service members overseas. During that visit, he was taken aback by the thrust of his discussions with many of the troops. The troops weren't focused on IEDs, snipers, the weapons aimed at them. They were more concerned with the budget discussions that mentioned increases in the cost of Tricare for them and their families, a civilian type of 401(k) retirement program, and reduction in troop levels." 

Walz elaborated on this during his speech, emphasizing the importance of ensuring congressional budgetary measures prioritize US troops.

Here are some of Walz's remarks, with the part shared online in bold: 

"What we need to make sure is that the budgets and the decisions we're making here reflect what the American people want. I have to tell you, when I talk to my constituents in southern Minnesota -- I don't care if they're Republican, Independent, Democrat -- it doesn't matter to them. When I tell them when I was in Afghanistan, you know what our troops were worried about? They were worried about their families' health care and they were worried about their pensions.

"I said, do you think that's really what you want them to be worrying about? When their friends and colleagues are being shot on a daily basis? And yet at the end of the day, they have to worry about that. We can make tough decisions, but don't you dare put those on the front lines first on the chopping block, there are other decisions that can be made."

Walz had also visited Afghanistan in 2008 with a different congressional delegation (archived here) that local media reported investigated soldier medical care and access to medical records.

Walz's comments about attending a ceremony as a soldier's body was loaded on to a plane to be sent home from Bagram Air Base were similarly shared in a false context. In the 2021 speech, the governor does not say he was deployed to Afghanistan (archived here).

Army Lieutenant Colonel Kristen Auge, a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard, previously told AFP that while Walz did not fight in Afghanistan, he did deploy with his unit to Italy in 2003 to support Operation Enduring Freedom.

AFP contacted Walz's office and the Harris campaign for comment, but a response was not forthcoming. 

More of AFP's reporting on misinformation about the 2024 election is available here.