J.D. Vance slams Tim Walz for ‘abandoning’ unit before deployment

Donald Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance slammed Kamala Harris’s V.P. pick on Wednesday amid reports that Gov. Tim Walz had skipped out on being deployed to Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard.

Vance, who served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq, said it was ‘shameful’ if Walz had retired in 2005 just as his battalion was preparing to go to war. ‘I mean, your job as a senior enlisted guy in a unit is to keep your people safe. That’s not a job you can switch out of on a moment’s notice,’ Vance told DailyMail.com during an exclusive interview aboard his campaign plane, nicknamed Trump Force Two. ‘So if he abandoned his troops before they went to Iraq or wherever … absolutely shameful.’

Walz, the governor of Minnesota , was named by Harris as her running mate on Tuesday. He appeared alongside her at a campaign rally in Philadelphia later that day. But 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,’ Behrends continued.

On Wednesday morning, Vance was on his way to Michigan for a campaign event hours before Harris was due to arrive in the same spot. He said his role was to remain ‘laser-focused’ on scrutinizing her policy failures on immigration, energy and manufacturing.

But he added he was astonished that the Harris campaign had not checked out Walz’s (pictured right) military record and accused him of lying to make a political point. ‘There was a clip the Kamala campaign posted about him where he’s making a gun control argument,’ said Vance. ‘He said, Look, you should not be able to carry the weapons that I carried in war.’

‘And I’m, I’m thinking to myself, well, when did you go to war? What weapon did you carry in the war, Tim, because apparently you skipped out on your unit before they went to Iraq. I know he didn’t go to a combat zone, so why is he lying to make a political point?’

Vance, who grew up in Ohio, is seen by the Trump campaign as key to eating into the Democrats’ so-called ‘blue wall’ of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

On Wednesday, he will first be in Shelby Township, Michigan, and at 2 p.m. in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The aim is to keep pressure on Harris, who is due in both places a few hours later.

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