Despite lobbing the same questions at Tim Walz, J.D. Vance lost it when pressed about his own military service.
Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance seems perfectly happy to dish out criticism of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over his military record, but he just can’t take it.
Vance blew up at CNN anchor Brianna Keilar on Thursday, after she called Vance an “imperfect messenger” to criticize Walz over his military service.
“At what point did military service become a liability?” Keilar asked rhetorically on CNN’s Inside Politics. “I also think that J.D. Vance as a messenger on this may be an imperfect messenger.”
Vance served a single four-year enlistment in the public affairs section in the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, and according to his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, the Republican nominee was “lucky to escape any real fighting.” Still, that hasn’t stopped Vance from accusing Walz, who served with the Army National Guard for 24 years, of exiting the service before his unit was deployed to Iraq.
He’s calling out Walz service history when really he has so much less service history than Walz. And as far as I can tell the “stolen valor” stuff is made up.
Walz retired before his unit received deployment orders so it wasn’t like he was evading a deployment. Walz was a sergeant major when he retired but upon retirement was downgraded to a master sergeant because he hadn’t completed all the sergeant major courses required within 3 years of his promotion.
So Republicans are saying he “stole valor” by claiming to retire as a sergeant major but to anyone whose been in the military (like me) this is really nothing like stolen valor…He did serve as a sergeant major and retire while a sergeant major but he is NOT a retired sergeant major. A distinction that’s obviously a bit confusing and normally nobody would care.
That makes sense. Thank you.