Bloomberg News was forced to edit a glaring mistake in what was apparently intended to be a glowing profile of Governor Tim Walz (D-MN...
Bloomberg News was forced to edit a glaring mistake in what was apparently intended to be a glowing profile of Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) — a mistake that only fanned the social media flames surrounding already-existing claims that Walz was guilty of stolen valor.
Kamala Harris, who only rose to the top of the ticket two weeks earlier after President Joe Biden announced that he could not continue his campaign, announced on Tuesday that Walz would be her running mate, and the article in question — headlined “Walz’s Holy Trinity of Normal: Coach, Teacher, Veteran” — was published just hours later.
In the piece, Bloomberg Businessweek correspondent Joshua Green referenced Walz’s military career — just over 24 years in the Nebraska (1981-1996) and then Minnesota (1996-2005) National Guard — but flubbed a couple of key details when he claimed that Walz had deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Marine Corps veteran and editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller Geoff Ingersoll pointed out the fact that OEF was Afghanistan. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) was the campaign that put boots on the ground in Iraq. Additionally, Walz never deployed to Iraq at all — and numerous reports state that he took a conditional promotion to the rank of Command Sergeant Major only to back out and abruptly retire altogether shortly after being informed that his unit was scheduled to deploy to Iraq. Prior to that, he was briefly assigned to a post in Italy — in support of OEF — but never served in a combat zone.
Ingersoll also pointed out that it mattered whether Green had simply gotten his report wrong or had been “misled” by Walz.
“Wow, this is wild. (Also OEF was Afghanistan, NOT Iraq.) Walz should be forced to confirm or deny whether he misled Bloomberg’s @JoshuaGreen, who is still reporting to this day that Walz did a tour in Iraq. And Green should come out and say whether he was misled. This is false then and it’s false now.”
At some point on Wednesday, Bloomberg updated the article — noting at the top of the page that the piece was “corrected August 7, 2024 at 3:46 PM CDT” — to correctly state that Walz had served in Italy rather than Iraq.
Green also posted the correction on X himself, taking responsibility for the error and saying, “My Walz newsletter yesterday wrongly stated he’d served in Iraq — he didn’t. He served in Italy. My error. Story has been corrected online and on the terminal.”
But the reason the story grew legs so quickly is that Walz has, in the past, been accused of embellishing his military career and using those embellishments to push a political agenda. In order to push for an “assault weapons” ban, for example, Walz has suggested that his experience carrying such weapons “in war” makes him qualified to tell civilians what they should not carry anywhere else.
“I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt,” Walz said at a campaign event. “I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can do CDC … We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are carried.”
Even CNN was forced to fact-check Walz on that comment, saying that “there is a difference between being in a combat area, being involved in a time of war, and actually being in a position where people are shooting at you. There is no evidence that any time that Governor Walz was in the position of being shot at and some of his language could easily be seen to suggest that he was.”
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