Just when you thought that Walz rollout couldn't get any worse for the Harris campaign, they are finally admitting that Walz lied when he claimed that he handled weapons "in war."
Although they used a different word.
"Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz 'misspoke' in a 2018 video circulated by the Harris campaign earlier this week that included the vice presidential candidate talking about his handling of weapons 'in war,' a campaign spokesperson said Friday," reports NBC News.
Walz has come under fire over the past week from people who previously served with him over his embellishing of his military record, which many say makes him guilty of stolen valor.
“Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country — in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way," a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement. Friday. "In making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the Governor misspoke. He did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them, unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance who prioritize the gun lobby over our children."
The video clip of Walz's previous remarks shows him discussing gun control and referring to his own military background. “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” Walz says in the clip posted by Harris’ campaign on Tuesday.
Walz's 24 years in the military included serving overseas and supporting forward units, but he was not deployed to a combat zone.
Vance, a Marine Corps veteran, accused his political rival of "stolen valor" this week.
“What bothers me about Tim Walz is this stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not," Vance said at an event in Michigan. "I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did.”
The Trump campaign wasn't impressed by the Harris campaign using a spokesperson to address the scandal.
“Why won’t Tim Walz address his lies himself?" Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung asked NBC News in an email Why does he need to send out lowly spokespeople to clean up his own mess?”
Doug Julin, a retired national guardsman who has said he worked with Walz, criticized Walz’s handling of his retirement during a CNN interview, suggesting that Walz had used a “back-door process.”
“Tim Walz knew the processes and the procedures, he went around me,” Julin said, adding that Walz “basically went to get somebody to back him, to get him out of there.”
Trump's running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), has also blasted Walz's stolen valor when, earlier this week, a reporter asked Vance about Walz's portrayal of Vance as an elitist with an Ivy League education.
Related: Even the Liberal Media Is Acknowledging Tim Walz's Stolen Valor
"I came from a family where nobody in my family had ever gone to law school. I grew up in a poor family. The fact that Tim Walz wants to turn it into a bad thing, that I actually worked myself through college, through law school and made something myself — to me, that's the American dream. And if Tim Walz wants to insult it, I think that's frankly pretty bizarre," Vance said. "As a Marine who served his country in uniform when the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably. 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, a fact that he's been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with."
What are the odds that Walz doesn't make it through the Democratic National Convention?
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