Religion

‘Geppetto’s Garden Gnome’: Daily Caller Editor Issues Challenge To Kinzinger, CNN Anchor For Denigrating JD Vance’s Service

Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, campaigning in Eau Claire, Wisc., Aug. 7, 2024. (Screen Capture/CSPAN)

Daily Caller Editor-in-Chief Geoff Ingersoll issued a challenge to former Republican Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and CNN host Brianna Keilar on Thursday for downplaying vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s service.

Keilar and Kinzinger both downplayed Vance’s service in Iraq on Wednesday and Thursday by arguing he was involved in “public affairs” rather than being in a combat zone. Ingersoll, who was deployed to Iraq in 2006, said Keilar and Kinzinger should be “ashamed” for their remarks.

“When I hear stuff like this from a guy who served, I find it really disgusting,” Ingersoll told Daily Caller editorial director and WMAL host Vince Coglianese. “And, I kind of give it to Keilar and there was another one, Mehdi Hassan is kind of saying the same thing  — ‘oh, he was just a press flack’ and it’s just complete hogwash. If you were an enlisted guy and you deployed, you were part of a unit and you behaved no different than the guys in that unit. You just had a camera strapped to you.”

Ingersoll, who previously served in the Marines as a combat correspondent, then issued a hiking challenge to Keilar, Kinzinger and Hasan.

“So these three people, I mean Mehdi Hasan, and brainless Keilar and that garden gnome Adam Kinzinger, these three people should be ashamed of themselves. And I have a little challenge for them. If any of them can out hike me in any terrain, anywhere, at any time, I will donate $10,000 to the veteran organization of their choice. So I hope they hear this and I hope they take me up on the challenge … oh, you’d see [Kinzinger] cry. He’d be crying. He’s like the garden gnome come to life with those wee little legs. It’s like Geppetto’s garden gnome, Adam Kinzinger,” Ingersoll said.

Hasan in a Wednesday “X” post that Vance “did PR for the Marine” in an attempt to defend Walz’s exiting the Army National Guard shortly before his battalion’s deployment to Iraq.

LISTEN:

Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2003 upon graduating from high school and deployed to Iraq in 2005, where he served as a combat correspondent, according to his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Ingersoll read out the names of several combat correspondents killed in action, noting they were not killed “while sitting at a desk writing press releases.”

Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard and left his battalion before it left for Iraq in 2005, according to his biography. Retired Command Sergeants Major Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr, two veterans who say they served in Walz’s battalion, accused the now-Minnesota governor in a 2018 letter of “betraying his country” by allowing the remainder of the battalion to be deployed to Iraq without him, according to the New York Post.

“On May 16th, 2005, [Walz] 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 and Herr wrote, according to the NYP.

Vance accused Walz on Wednesday of committing an act of “stolen valor” after Vice President Kamala Harris’ headquarters released a video of the Minnesota governor saying civilians should not own the weapons he carried in combat. The Ohio senator said Walz’s reported exit from the battalion is “shameful.”

“I think it’s shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to make a promise that you’re going to follow through and to drop out right before you actually have to go,” Vance said during a Wednesday press conference. “I also think it’s dishonest … He said we shouldn’t allow weapons that I used in war to be on the streets. Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq and he has not spent a day in a combat zone? What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage.”

Kinzinger told Keilar on Thursday that Vance attempted to “earn cheap political points” by accusing Walz of committing an act of “stolen valor” over damning reports regarding his service.

(Featured image credit: Screenshot/CSPAN)