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‘Not Stolen Valor’: CNN’s Brianna Keilar, GOP Rep Exchange Blows Over Gov Tim Walz’s Military Service

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CNN anchor Brianna Keilar sparred with Republican Florida Rep. Mike Waltz on Wednesday over Democratic Minnesota Gov. and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s claims about his own military service.

Waltz is one of 50 congressional Republicans with military backgrounds who wrote a letter to Walz on Wednesday calling on him to publicly address “egregious misrepresentations” about his 24-year service in the Army National Guard. Keilar accused the Florida congressman of attacking Walz’s military service.

“Well I want to be clear and correct your characterization, I am not attacking his service. I served in the National Guard for 22 out of my 27 years, and I know plenty of guardsman and reservists who served, maybe they went to combat, maybe they didn’t, they retired at a certain rank. Good on them, and I celebrate them. He said he’s proud of that service. If he’s so damn proud about it, why does he have to continue to embellish it and to lie about it, because the facts are clear,” Waltz said.

“It’s not stolen valor,” Keilar shot back. “I just want to be clear, I’m reading this, Mike, and quote, ‘abandoning the men and women under your leadership just as they were getting ready to deploy is not honorable either.’ That is an attack on his service.”

The letter accused Walz of falsely claiming to be a “Retired Command Sergeant Major,” despite allegedly not completing the requirements, and claiming to have carried weapons “in war” despite leaving his battalion before its deployment to Iraq in 2005.

‘Not Stolen Valor’: CNN’s Brianna Keilar, GOP Rep Exchange Blows Over Gov. Tim Walz’s Military Service pic.twitter.com/stpBXDnkrn

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Waltz said the Minnesota governor knew his battalion would be deployed to Iraq before leaving his unit, and must answer to that exit. Keilar said Walz declared his congressional candidacy before seeing the “orders come out.”

“Rather than defending these decisions, I wish you would interview him and ask him those questions or that he would at least sit down and answer for these inconsistencies. The other thing that we say in the letter is, repeatedly, he was described in front of him, introduced at events, described in articles as a combat veteran and he did nothing to correct it, and still today is doing nothing to correct it. So he clearly implied and allowed others to describe himself as a combat veteran and he clearly exaggerated his service, which he shouldn’t have done, for political gain. That is unacceptable to the veterans’ community,” the Florida congressman said.

“Yeah, look, he has some questions to answer for. I don’t know if it’s worth burning down 24 years of service,” Keilar replied.

Footage from 2007 showed Walz failing to correct then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she praised him for his service “on the battlefield.” CSPAN then identified the then-Minnesota congressman as an “Afghanistan War Veteran,” though he never served in that war.

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, who served in the Marine Corps., accused Walz of committing an act of “stolen valor” for stating he carried a weapon of war without having served in combat.

“I think it’s shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to make a promise that you’re gonna follow through and to drop out right before you actually have to go,” Vance said during an Aug. 7 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.”

Walz responded to political opponents’ attacks by saying he is “proud” to serve in the National Guard at an Aug. 13 event in Los Angeles, California.