1). Walz makes statement about military weapons and gun control at a town meeting, Posted on “X” formerly Twitter by Kamala HQ, Duration of this video 31 seconds, at < https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/
2). “CNN fact-checks Vance's claims about Walz's military service”, Laura Coates, CNN, Walz's statement about carrying a weapon of war runs from 1:37 – 1:44, < https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/
3). “Playbook: Team Trump tries to tear down Walz”, Aug 8, 2024, RACHAEL BADE, EUGENE DANIELS & RYAN LIZZA, Politico, at < https://www.politico.com/
4). “Kamala Harris picks right-wing governor as Democratic running mate”, Aug 7, 2024, Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), at < https://www.wsws.org/en/
Introduction by dmorista: The Trump / Vance campaign has tried to smear Tim Walz with a “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” type of attack, delivered by J. D. Vance, but no doubt masterminded by Chris LaCivita, who ran the Swift Boat operation for Bush the Younger against John Kerry in 2004.
The attack was based on a statement made at a townhall type meeting where gun control was a major topic. Walz talked mostly about working to tighten up the incredibly lax gun laws that plague the U.S., and that are so useful to fascists and othe reactionary forces. In Item 1)., “Walz makes statement ….”, presents the most complete version of Walz's statement that I have found. A complete transcript of the statement is here:
“Hope woke up like many of you did five weeks ago and said 'Dad your'e the only person I know who's in elective office you need to stop what's happening with this'. I'll take my kick in the butt for the NRA. I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt; and I gave the money back. And I'll tell you what I have been doing. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks, we can do CDC research, we can make sure we don't have reciprocal carry among states. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are the only place those weapons are at”.
Hope is one of Walz's two children, and apparently this town hall appearance took place a few weeks after one of the horrific mass shootings, that occur with such horrifying frequency, here in the U.S. (and no place else in the developed nations of the world BTW). Walz was primarily discussing the grim regularity in which children are slaughtered in mass shootings at schools or other places. Children that are with terrible regularity killed with military weapons; that smash their bodies so totally that their own parents cannot identify them without DNA analysis. An effective counterpoint would be to tie Trump / Vance to the weapons profiteers whose profits are the proximate cause of those endless school and public event shootings. Walz strayed a tiny bit in his statement and LaCivita and Vance pounced on that.
The timeline of Walz's resignation from the National Guard after 24 years is discussed in Item 2)., “CNN fact-checks Vance's claims ….” and a shorter version of his statement at the town hall meeting is included.
Item 3)., “Playbook: Team Trump ….”, looks at the overall machinations over this “carrying a weapon of War” statement, between the two campaigns, in greater detail.
And just so we remember, while Walz is certainly not as vicious, dangerous, or malignant as Vance is; he is still a relatively conservative politician. Item 4)., “Kamala Harris picks right-wing governor ….” from WSWS presents a good analysis of how Walz is a relatively conservative defender of Capital.
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The following twitter link won't open on blogger, so please click yourself:
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1820918063966962143
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Likewise, the following video won't load on blogger so please click on it:
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Playbook: Team Trump tries to tear down Walz
Presented by the Brennan Center for Justice
With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine
TRUMP’S ‘OPERATION: SWIFT BOAT’ — So much for that GOP reboot to focus on policy.
In a hailfire of attacks over the last 24 hours, the Trump campaign’s latest strategy has come into view: flaying TIM WALZ’s military record by accusing him of misrepresenting his rank, his service and abandoning his unit on the eve of its deployment to Iraq.
Allegations of “stolen valor,” to use the phrase Trump No. 2 JD VANCE (R-Ohio) deployed yesterday, have a gravity and seriousness far beyond your typical campaign jab. They’re personal and cutting. If substantiated, they can be career-ending. Even if unsubstantiated, they can be image-defining — but can also undercut the gravity of the charge itself, reducing it to just another political grenade.
The Trump campaign knows this. In 2004, CHRIS LaCIVITA waged a successful effort under the banner of “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” to discredit Purple Heart recipient JOHN KERRY’s Vietnam record in the months ahead of his 2004 loss to GEORGE W. BUSH.
LaCivita is now one of Trump’s top advisers.
"The two biggest sins in the military are claiming credit for decorations you don’t have or claiming combat action that you did not participate in …. And this much is certain: He’s guilty of at least one of them,” LaCivita told our colleagues Jared Mitovich, Meridith McGraw and Connor O’Brien yesterday. “Nothing regarding his lies has been weaponized in a political sense. That’s about to change.”
There are risks to this approach.
- 2024 is not 2004. In that election, the Iraq War was perhaps the defining issue; this year, the election centers on domestic politics. It’s unclear whether these very personal attacks will even move the needle with voters who care more about issues like the economy, the border and so on.
- It focuses attacks on the running mate, not the principal. There’s a compelling case that every day the Republicans spend talking about fine points of Walz’s military record rather than prosecuting the case against Kamala Harris that they insist they want to make — and about which they have yet to settle on a clear message — is a distraction.
- Then there’s Trump himself, who has faced well-documented accusations that he repeatedly dodged the Vietnam draft by claiming to have “bone spurs” in his feet that kept him from serving.
While there are legitimate questions about how Walz — who served in the Nebraska and Minnesota National Guard — has characterized parts of his 24-year-long military career, there are just as many questions about whether Team Trump is characterizing them fairly. Plus, we’ll note, Walz has faced these attacks in past races and still won.
Let’s unpack some of this.
1. The accusation: Walz abandoned his men before they deployed, leaving them hanging without a leader.
The facts: Walz retired to run for Congress amid rumors that his men could be deployed, JOSEPH EUSTICE, who served with Walz at the time, told ABC News’ Anne Flaherty, Nathan Luna, Luis Martinez, and Justin Fishel. But they didn’t know for sure.
In fact, “Walz filed paperwork for his congressional run in February 2005, about a month before reports emerged that the Minnesota National Guard might be deployed,” our colleagues report. “Walz then announced his run in May of that year, two months before the Minnesota National Guard’s directive was officially issued.”
There’s no evidence that Walz left specifically to avoid a wartime deployment. In fact, Eustice told ABC News that Walz struggled with the decision. Walz, a critic of Bush’s war in Iraq, had a 4-year-old daughter at the time. While some of his fellow servicemembers criticized his decision to leave, others balked at the notion that he was trying to dodge combat.
“He was not that kind of man,” one of his comrades AL BONNIFIELD told WaPo’s Dan Lamothe, Shawn Boburg and Alex Horton.
2. The accusation: Walz lied about serving in combat.
The facts: The Harris campaign itself recently circulated a video of Walz calling for background checks for gun purchases: “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.”
That remark continues to raise eyebrows since Walz has openly acknowledged he never faced active combat, thus leaving real questions about why he’d say he carried such a weapon “in war.”
3. The accusation: Walz “falsely claimed he served in Afghanistan”
The facts: Chuck Ross of the conservative Washington Free Beacon dug up an archived Walz press release from 2006 that calls him “a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom,” the first stage of the War on Terror after 9/11. They also have video of an upset veteran confronting Walz staff about his claim, arguing that those who didn’t serve on the ground in Afghanistan are not allowed to do so.
It’s not exactly a clean shot. Walz was, in fact, deployed between 2003 and 2004 to Europe to support Operation Enduring Freedom, but was never deployed to Afghanistan, where OEF was centered. There appears to be some disagreement not only about whether OEF was Afghanistan-specific — and whether those who served in support of the mission are allowed to say they were part of it. As WaPo’s military reporter Dan Lamothe noted on X last night, the operation itself lists casualties in countries beyond Afghanistan.
4. The accusation: Walz inflated his rank — an allegation two retired command sergeants major also made during Walz’s 2018 run for governor.
The facts: The Harris campaign and others have described Walz as a “retired Command Sergeant Major” in recent days. It’s true that he rose to that rank, but he didn’t retain that title.
“Walz indeed achieved that rank in service in September 2004,” ABC News notes. “But he would have had to serve in that particular role for three years to retire as one officially, according to the National Guard.”
Thus, claims by Walz and his allies describing him as such are inaccurate, per WaPo: “Walz himself did so in a video clip from 2006 that was surfaced by C-SPAN on Tuesday and in a 2018 clip posted on his own YouTube account.” (The Harris campaign website now says, accurately, that Walz “served for 24 years, rising to the rank of Command Sergeant Major.”)
WHAT OTHER VETERAN POLS SAY: Rep. MIKE WALTZ (R-Fla.), a former Green Beret, was among the Republicans slamming Walz yesterday: “It is kind of like the quarterback of a big team walking away from their team right before they go to the Super Bowl. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
But some high-ranking Democrats appear to think they can parry these attacks — and maybe use them to their benefit.
Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG, who served in Afghanistan in the Navy Reserve, took a swipe at Vance on X, saying “denigrating the worth of a soldier’s service based on whether he deployed to a war zone is… kind of like denigrating the worth of a woman’s citizenship based on whether she happens to have children.”
Sen. MARK KELLY (D-Ariz.), a former Navy fighter pilot, used the chance to take a shot at Trump: “You both deserve to be thanked for your service. Don’t become Donald Trump. He calls veterans suckers and losers and that is beneath those of us who have actually served.”
And, FWIW, here’s former Rep. PETER MEIJER (R-Mich.), who was an intelligence adviser in Iraq: “I think Walz played fast & loose with his military bio,” he wrote on X late last night. “He let audiences paint in their minds a deceptive picture. It was shady but not stolen valor.”
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Kamala Harris picks right-wing governor as Democratic running mate
The selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the running mate for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has become the occasion for a full-scale propaganda campaign.
The corporate media, backed by Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and pseudo-left groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, are portraying Walz as a “progressive,” even “left-wing” figure, in an attempt to bolster support for the Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies.
Walz was one of six on Harris’s shortlist of potential vice presidential choices. These included Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, and three other governors: Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. Those in the group were politically interchangeable, all trusted servants of the ruling class, all supporters of US imperialism’s war against Russia in Ukraine and its preparations for war against Iran and China.
Walz has already demonstrated his dedication to the defense of American imperialism. Before embarking on a political career, he spent 24 years in the Army National Guard (enlisting at age 17), rising to the top level for a non-commissioned officer, command sergeant major, specializing in field artillery.
In the course of 12 years in Congress and six as governor, Walz has compiled an absolutely conventional record as a right-wing capitalist politician. He served the agribusiness interests which dominated his rural southern Minnesota district—including giants like Cargill and Hormel. As governor, he did the bidding of the billion-dollar corporations headquartered in the Twin Cities, such as Target, 3M, General Mills, Best Buy, US Bancorp, Xcel Energy and United Health Care. When protests broke out in Minneapolis in 2020, after the police murder of George Floyd shocked the world, Walz sent in the National Guard.
His supposed “progressive” measures, such as making school breakfasts and lunches free, enacted last year after the Democrats gained control of both houses of the state legislature, were similar to the legislation pursued by the Biden administration during 2021–2022, when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. The reforms were entirely inadequate, a drop in the bucket compared to actual social needs, and pushed through only to buy time while the administration pursued its real priority, instigating and waging the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
When Harris’s short list emerged publicly, however, the trade union apparatus immediately embraced Walz as their favorite. Shawn Fain of the UAW declared that Walz and Beshear were his top choices, while most other AFL-CIO unions endorsed Walz as the continuation of Biden’s “pro-union” posturing. The union executives regarded Walz, a former public school teacher and member of the National Education Association, with close relations with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), United Steelworkers (USW) and Teamsters, as the vice presidential hopeful most likely to provide them a “seat at the table” in deciding how to implement policies that will reduce the living standards, jobs and social benefits of the working class.
The supposed “left” of the Democratic Party likewise hailed the selection of Walz. Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted, “Tim Walz is a great asset to Kamala Harris’ winning campaign & administration… As governor, he delivered for working families in MN.” In 2018, however, when Walz was running for governor, Sanders backed a candidate who attacked Walz as the most conservative Democrat in the three-way primary contest.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, called the selection of Walz “a watershed moment.” The Democratic Party was moving back to “its actual roots of a populist working class party,” she claimed.
Ocasio-Cortez said that by picking Walz, Harris had united the entire Democratic Party, citing support for Walz from right-wing West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. “That really is no small feat,” she claimed. “I am trying to think about the last time Senator Manchin and I were on the same side of an issue, and it’s not common or often that you see that.”
It is actually not hard to discover the last time Ocasio-Cortez and Manchin—a right-wing multimillionaire coal executive—were on the same side. Both voted for the $90 billion supplemental military spending bill passed by Congress in April, the sole significant legislation passed in 2024. The bill provided nearly $60 billion for the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine and more than $10 billion for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, as well as more money for the US military buildup against China.
The Democratic Socialists of America, in a rare public statement, boasted of the Walz selection as a great achievement for its purported—but hitherto invisible—campaign against genocide in Gaza. The statement claimed:
Harris choosing Walz as a running mate has shown the world that DSA and our allies on the left are a force that cannot be ignored. Through collective action, DSA and the US left more broadly have made it clear that change is needed. DSA members organized in our workplaces and unions to realign the labor movement to support Palestinian liberation.
The statement merely demonstrates that the DSA is nothing but a faction of the Democratic Party, the “left wing” of imperialism and genocide. The Democratic Party, like the Republican Party, is unalterably committed to upholding the worldwide interests of American imperialism, which includes the use of Israel as its attack-dog in the Middle East.
But through such desperate pretenses, the DSA hopes to block working people and young people horrified by the genocide in Gaza from breaking with the Democratic Party and taking up a real fight against imperialist war and ethnic slaughter.
Far from representing any restriction on Israeli genocide in Gaza, the selection of Walz puts a second ferocious defender of Zionism on the Democratic presidential ticket. While in Congress, Walz served on the House Armed Services Committee, where he was privy to US war plans from 2007 through 2018, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and elsewhere. He routinely voted to approve the massive US military subsidies to Israel, and visited Israel as part of a congressional delegation which met with Netanyahu.
There is one other aspect of the pro-Walz propaganda blitz which deserves mention: his characterization of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, as “weird,” a description that has been embraced by virtually every prominent Democrat.
Walz explained, in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” that he chose the word to downplay the seriousness of the Trump-Vance threat to democracy. It was better, he said, to “just ratchet down some of the, you know the scariness or whatever, and just name it what it is.”
This is an effort to cover up the very real threat posed by Trump and the Republican Party, in line with the entire response of the Democratic Party to the January 6 fascistic coup. Opposition to the danger of fascism and authoritarianism cannot be waged through support for this right-wing party of Wall Street and imperialism, but only through the mobilization of the working class in opposition to both parties and the entire capitalist system.
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