Following days of controversy, PolitiFact officially gave GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance a “mostly false” rating on Friday for claiming his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz, abandoned his National Guard unit prior to its deployment to Iraq. However, PolitiFact omitted some key details from those who served with Walz that could’ve changed the truth-o-meter.
In the “if your time is short” summary, Sara Swann writes, “Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz served in the Nebraska and Minnesota National Guards for 24 years. Walz has said he retired in May 2005 to run for Congress; he submitted retirement paperwork five to seven months beforehand.”
She also insists, “After Walz filed candidacy paperwork in February 2005, his battalion received a March 2005 notification for a potential — not definite — deployment within two years, not immediately.”
Finally, she maintains, “Walz’s battalion was not officially ordered to go to Iraq until July 2005, two months after Walz retired.”
Swann does mention the fact that people who served with Walz have come out and criticized his decision. She cites Doug Julin, “who served as a more senior command sergeant major in Walz’s battalion, said Walz went over his head to get retirement approval before the unit’s deployment was official, because Julin would have ‘analyzed it and challenged him,’ the New York Post reported Aug. 8. Others who served in Walz’s battalion have said he 'ditched' them and his actions were 'dishonorable,' Fox News reported.”
However, for some reason, that does not appear to have affected PolitiFact’s conclusion. Swann’s article was released Friday morning, but Thursday night Julin went on CNN and poured cold water on the idea Walz didn’t know for sure if his unit would be ordered to go to Iraq, “he told me [in March 2005], he says, I have not been nominated, I am going forward with the battalion. I said, ‘Good, let's go.’”
Julin also wasn’t a fan of the separating a notice to deploy with formal orders, “People say, well, he never knew he was going forward. Yeah, he knew he was going forward. Had he gotten his orders yet? No. At that time, he had not.”
As for PolitiFact, Swann conceded Vance had a point on Walz claiming to be command sergeant major, therefore saving him from a full “false” rating. However, Swann omitted the part where Vance criticized Walz for saying he carried weapons “in war” while pushing for gun control.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Pinocchio system is the closest analogue to PolitiFact’s truth-o-meter, and their fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, declined to rate such claims, “Whether he abandoned his troops is a matter of perspective, but it is noteworthy that his retirement request was not blocked.”
