The Grand Illusion
J.D. Vance’s has attacked Tim Walz’s military record as misrepresentative, but, like most political attacks by the Trumpists, Vance’s charges do have a few grains of truth in them.
Vance charged Walz with resigning from the National Guard when Walz learned that his unit would be deployed to Iraq.
The actual facts tell a somewhat different story. By early 2005, Walz had served twenty-four years in the Minnesota National Guard, including a disaster deployment in the U.S. and an Iraq support deployment to Italy in 2003, and he could have retired at any time. In February 2005, Walz filed the paperwork to run for Congress. A month later, Walz’s battalion was informed that it might be deployed to Iraq at some time within the next two years. After considerable self-debate, Walz put in his retirement papers. The actual orders for the battalion to deploy were not issued until August, and the battalion did not leave on that deployment until March of 2006. Basically, Walz chose to try to serve Minnesota as a congressman, rather than continue in the Minnesota National Guard, since he couldn’t do both.
J.D. Vance enlisted in the Marines and did four years of active duty. He also recently made the statement that when his country asked him to go to Iraq, he did it, but that Walz “dropped out.” What Vance conveniently ignores is that he was on active duty with the Marine Corps, and it wasn’t a choice – unless Vance went, he’d face desertion charges, and his time in Iraq was as non-combat press specialist with a Marine air wing.
After his time in the Marines, Vance completed college and Yale law school, followed by two clerkships and a brief stint in corporate law. Then he began working in venture capital, including Mithril Capital, a firm backed by Paypal founder Peter Thiel. Along the way, he married a law school classmate who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and who remains a well-paid corporate attorney. Yet, as a product of “the establishment,” and someone who was once a “never Trumper,” Vance brands himself as “anti-establishment” and trades on his Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir of his Appalachian younger years and tends to forget his entire post-graduate corporate law/Wall Street/Silicon Valley career .
Just who is doing the misrepresenting?
“Just who is doing the misrepresenting?”
The same ones as always, whenever they open their mouths or start to type.
If Trump can just lose this election, he can spend the rest of his life fighting criminal charges, or at least be too old to run again and have any shot at all… (He already seems like he’s in dementia or deep senescence, anyway.)
It’s not even as clean cut as that, as I understand it he began his retirement process in 2004. Had to make that final decision under the rumor that his unit MIGHT be called up. Retired. And then the unit finally found out “yes, you’re going to be deployed.”
In general they attack things that sort of look true on the surface.
Just like them going after him for “stolen valor” because he’s supposedly lying about his Rank. But, in reality he obtained his rank, served in his rank, but did not complete a required training before retirement. So for benefits purposes he was placed back down at one rank lower.
But none of that is relevant. They can’t handle debating policy and reason, so they just fling lies.