Although the mainstream media has been working overtime to bury the Tim Walz stolen valor scandal while the Harris campaign has just been hoping it all goes away, soldiers who served with the Minnesota governor have been taking to the airwaves and social media to blast him for A) retiring early just before the unit was to be deployed to Iraq and B) for misrepresenting his rank as Command Sergeant Major ever since. By retiring early, Walz was demoted from that rank.
The latest to let loose is the former battalion commander for Walz’s National Guard unit, John Kolb, who posted a devastating takedown on Facebook. “He did not earn the rank or successfully complete any assignment as an E9,” Kolb wrote. “It is an affront to the Noncommissioned Officer Corps that he continues to glom onto the title.”
Kolb continued:
"I can sit in the cockpit of an airplane, it does not make me a pilot,” Kolb wrote. “Similarly, when the demands of service and leadership at the highest level got real, he chose another path.”
He said it was Walz’s to right retire early, but it wasn't his right to continually claim a rank that he had not actually achieved:
In Kolb’s Facebook post, he stated that Walz had “got out of the way for better leadership,” and praised Tom Behrends, who replaced Walz, as being “the right leader at the right time.” Kolb added that he had “no opinion of Mr. Walz’s decision to leave service at the time he did.”
“I have no opinion of Mr. Walz’s decision to leave service at the time he did,” Kolb added. “It was his right to retire early. I also have no criticism of his service as an E7 and E8 in the MNARNG. By all accounts and on the record, he was a competent Chief of Firing Battery/Gunnery Sergeant and First Sergeant. I cannot say the same of his service sitting, frocked, in the CSM chair.”
According to the military, frocking means, “In certain circumstances an officer selected for promotion to the next higher grade may be allowed to be "frocked" and wear the rank devices of this higher grade. They are NOT entitled to pay, but are accorded the courtesies of that grade.”
Speaking of Behrends, he too took to Facebook to savage Walz over the issue:
Walz himself has been largely silent on the issue, while the Harris campaign has quietly made changes on their website and issued a weak statement that did little to put out the fire. Those on the left will presumably continue to pretend that this is all a right-wing plot and that Walz is a hero, but the American people take issues like stolen valor very seriously.
This one isn’t going away anytime soon. I can’t wait for Vance to bring it up in the debate; I’ll be opening a cold one for that.