Bob Maginnis, a retired U.S. Army infantry officer, says any controversy over Walz’s military service in the Minnesota National Guard begins with his rank.
Walz achieved the high rank of command sergeant major, an achievement the Harris-Walz campaign is predictably touting, but the sergeant-turned-congressman was forced to retire as a lower-ranked master sergeant because he did not complete the required coursework to retire at the the higher rank.
“And I suspect,” Maginnis says, “that he's lying about that for obvious reasons.”
The most obvious reason for doing so would be politics, which is famous for exaggerations and outright lies. Walz has dishonestly bragged about being a retired command sergeant major for years in political ads, public appearances, and in news interviews. As a U.S. congressman, for example, he referred to himself as a “retired command sergeant major” in a 2009 speech to soldiers who were deploying to Iraq.
Then-Congressman Walz included his command sergeant major rank on a "Congressional Challenge Coin," a coin some lawmakers create to tell their biography, The Daily Wire reported.
Walz’s years of misleading the public has frustrated his fellow servicemembers, who have accused him of "stolen valor" for years, but now the public has finally caught up to the falsehoods.
With the public now paying attention, a description of Walz as a “retired command sergeant major” was quietly scrubbed from the Harris-Walz campaign website August 7, The New York Post pointed out.
Another issue is Walz claiming he carried a military firearm in war.
Maginnis says there is no evidence Walz did so, and a fact-check by liberal CNN called Walz’s claim “absolutely false” and tied his false story to his campaign for stricter gun laws, the Post said.
“So he should clarify that and retract it, because it's just plain not true,” Maginnis says.
Beyond a military record full of lies and exaggerations, Maginnis says the potential U.S. vice president is also dragging down his party because of his ties to a radical Islamist and because of his chummy relationship with China and its authoritarian Chinese Communist Party.
If all of those issues start affecting Democratic voters from now to Election Day, Maginnis concludes, “they'll recognize that he comes with a lot of liabilities that we don't want to have to tolerate."
