Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz has faced accusations that he exaggerated his military service, including his rank upon retirement and whether he served in combat during his 24 years in the National Guard. The Harris campaign modified its online biography of Walz regarding his rank, and Walz himself has acknowledged that he “misspoke” when saying he carried weapons “in war.”
But a viral tweet with 2.7 million views that claims Walz lied about being deployed to Afghanistan is itself false, and it is actually undercut by the very video clip included in the tweet.
“It gets worse for Walz,” media personality Rob Smith captioned a clip of then-Rep. Walz speaking with a Gold Star family about mental health support for veterans. “Unearthed footage from 2004 shows then-Rep. Tim Walz telling a Gold Star family that he deployed to Afghanistan.”
In the video clip, Walz never claims he was in Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom.
“We were in support of OEF,” Walz told the families in the video.
As we noted in an earlier Dispatch Fact Check:
Between 2003 and 2004, Walz served in Italy as part of the Minnesota National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery in support of active forces in Afghanistan. “My battalion provided base security throughout the European theater from Turkey to England in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan,” he said in a 2007 C-SPAN interview.
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