Dem VP candidate Tim Walz blames his passion for exaggerated service claims during CNN interview: ‘I speak candidly’

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz blamed his “passion” and “grammar” for his exaggerated claims of carrying “weapons of war … in war” when asked to address the controversy Thursday in CNN’s interview with the Democratic ticket. 

The Minnesota governor and 24-year National Guard veteran made a misleading claim suggesting that he had combat experience in an anti-gun violence video in 2018 that recently resurfaced. He was advocating for relegating military-style rifles to the battlefield.

“We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” he said in the video.

But in his more than two decades of military service – with the Nebraska National Guard from 1981 to 1996 and the Minnesota National Guard from 1996 to 2005 – Walz, 60, never saw combat.

He had only been deployed to Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom involving the war in Afghanistan and to Norway in support of NATO.

Asked Thursday why he inflated his service record with the claim, Walz claimed he got carried away because “we were talking about – in this case, this was after a school shooting – the ideas of carrying these weapons of war.”

“I speak candidly. I wear my emotions on my sleeves, and I speak especially passionately about about our children being shot in schools and around, around guns,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash. “So I think people know me. They know who I am. They know where, where my heart is.”

The Harris-Walz campaign had previously said the VP candidate “misspoke” in the video.

Walz later blamed his poor “grammar” for the exaggeration.

“My wife, the English teacher, tells me my grammar is not always correct,” he said.

Walz then lobbed a passive-aggressive insult at those who have criticized his exaggerations, such as Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio.)

“The one thing I’ll never do is I’ll never demean another member’s service in any way. I never have and I never will,” he said.

Criticisms of Walz’s portrayal of his service record came after it came to light that he retired in 2004 from the National Guard after learning his unit would deploy to Iraq.

Instead of staying on with his unit, Walz chose his political career – but not before his campaign issued a press release in March of that year that he would go to Iraq if called. 

Walz was asked just three questions in the hourlong interview alongside Harris, who took the majority of the screentime. In total, Walz spoke for less than 10 minutes in the interview.