AILSA CHANG, HOST:
By most measures, the new Democratic ticket has had an impressively smooth launch. But there is one caveat to that - controversy over how Tim Walz has described his military service. A spokeswoman for the Harris-Walz campaign has said in a statement that the Democratic vice presidential nominee, quote, "misspoke" when talking about his military service. Walz, who served for 24 years in the National Guard, had made a comment that sounded like he had been to war. Walz's Republican opponent, JD Vance, pounced on that comment to accuse Walz of what's called stolen valor, just about the most serious charge possible in veteran circles. But there's also a history of playing politics with military service, one that we have seen in past elections. And for more on that, we're joined now by NPR's Quil Lawrence and Don Gonyea. Hey to both of you.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Hi there.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Hello.
CHANG: So Quil, I want to start with you. Can you just remind us exactly what Tim Walz had said?
LAWRENCE: Yes. This is a video that surfaced last week where Walz, in 2018, is talking about keeping assault rifles off American streets.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TIM WALZ: But we can do background checks. We can do CDC research. We can make sure we don't have reciprocal carry among states. And we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.
(CHEERING)
LAWRENCE: So JD Vance then said Walz was claiming to have been to war, which he was not, and even calling it stolen valor, which is actually a legal term when you misrepresent your service for personal gain. This falls far short of that, but Vance made that charge.
CHANG: OK. And now, days after those remarks, say more about what the Harris-Walz campaign is saying about all of this after the fact.
LAWRENCE: Right. They issued that statement that he did misspeak back in 2018, but then people have been going over Walz's public statements with a fine-tooth comb and finding spots where maybe the speaker or the host interviewing him misidentified him as having been to Afghanistan or having been to war and he did not correct them. So it's things where he just failed to correct them.
Although, as recently as last month, before he was picked as Harris' nomination for VP, he was interviewed on CNN, and Jake Tapper misidentified him as an Afghanistan vet, and Walz corrected him. So I would say it's not like Walz has a reputation for running around, bragging about service. He more often says things like this, what he said to Minnesota Public Radio back in 2018.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALZ: I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did, and I know that. And I willingly say I got four more out of the military than they got out of me.
CHANG: OK. Well, beyond this accusation about stolen valor, there are a few additional issues that Republicans have been trying to hit Walz with - right? - like, related to his military record.
LAWRENCE: Really, the big one is that Walz retired two months before an alert that his unit was going to mobilize to Iraq. Now, they didn't leave for Iraq until the following year. There was plenty of time to have him replaced. But it's clear at the time Walz knew that Iraq was probably coming for his unit. He discussed having wanted to run for Congress at age 40 at this point and after having reenlisted after 911.
But then it was a very bad extended deployment to Iraq for the Minnesota National Guard. And a few fellow guardsmen have alleged that he conveniently retired before his battalion was deployed to Iraq, and they've been using words like desertion and abandonment, which again, desertion has a legal definition. This is far short of that. These charges have been around in all of Walz's campaign for Congress and for governor. It hasn't moved the needle in the past, but we'll see what it does now.
CHANG: OK. Well, Don, let's turn to you because all of this focus on Walz's military record has gotten people looking back at another moment in American politics where a Democratic nominee's military resume was questioned, even attacked. And that was, of course, John Kerry, during his presidential campaign back in 2004. And something interesting to note, a senior adviser on the Trump campaign today, Chris LaCivita, had played a prominent role in those attacks against Kerry, right?
GONYEA: Yes, and that's a campaign I actually covered for NPR. John Kerry was a U.S. senator and a Vietnam vet, a former commander of a small water craft known as a swift boat. And during the war, he earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star for actions during combat. At the Democratic Convention that year, in 2004, he made his military service a focal point of his acceptance speech.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHN KERRY: I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty.
(CHEERING)
GONYEA: So, I mean, that kind of sums up the vibe of it and how he featured his service. But within a week of that moment, the attacks on his military service began. They came from an outside group known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Involved in that group was Chris LaCivita, present-day Trump adviser. And suddenly, ads like this one were all over TV and cable.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD, "ANY QUESTIONS?")
AL FRENCH: I served with John Kerry.
BOB ELDER: I served with John Kerry.
GEORGE ELLIOTT: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.
FRENCH: He is lying about his record.
LOUIS LETSON: I know John Kerry is lying...
GONYEA: You can hear the tone that Kerry let his men down, that his heroism is a lie. The ads were indeed fact-checked and shown to be false, but they packed a punch, and they put the Democratic campaign and the nominee on the defensive.
CHANG: And why? Like, why were those ads at that time particularly effective?
GONYEA: This was all in the aftermath of the 911 attacks less than three years earlier. Afghanistan - the war there was underway. The Iraq War had also been launched, and after initial successes, it was starting to bog down. And the threat of terrorism was very much still on the minds of Americans.
The Bush reelection campaign, I should say, was not connected to the Swift Boat ads. Still, President Bush portrayed Kerry and the Democrats as being soft on terror. And the Swift Boat ads, again, falsely called Kerry a liar regarding his military history, and it's that old political tactic of going after your opponent's strength.
CHANG: Right. OK. Well, Don, how much do you think the attacks on Walz's military record - how much do you think they could stick and rob the Harris-Walz campaign of some of their momentum right now?
GONYEA: I mean, here's the thing. It doesn't have to fully stick to do some political damage. The goal of the attack is not necessarily for it to all be proven true. Especially in the case of those Swift Boat ads, they were found to be false, but it still muddies the waters, and it can confuse voters. That was the goal then, and you can see it's the kind of thing they're trying to make happen again.
CHANG: That was NPR's Quil Lawrence and Don Gonyea. Thank you to both of you.
GONYEA: Thank you.
LAWRENCE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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