Minnesota Governor Tim Walz reportedly pioneered the "weird" taunt against JD Vance. That's increasingly looking like an acute manifestation of projection. As we learn more about the wave of lies and distortions promulgated by Walz, another word that comes to mind is 'pathological.' The Democrats may have just put one serial embellisher and fabricator out to pasture, in Joe Biden, but it seems they've added another one to their presidential ticket. Walz has exaggerated, distorted, and outright lied about his military service, including his final rank at retirement. He's been called on it for years, by military brethren up and down his chain of command. He's responded with unresponsive indignation, by falsely suggesting that his critics on this front never wore the uniform, and by demeaning members of his own unit who've spoken out as inconsequential '19 year old cooks' (never mind that the most prominent among them are his commanding officer, and his second in command). They are still actively lying on this subject, in spite of a factual correction from the National Guard itself:
If you are willing to do this sort of thing about your military service, what won't you lie about? The shamelessness is seemingly endless, on matters large and small:
We've also covered the brazenness of Walz's falsehoods about his DUI. His 2006 Congressional campaign (he quit the military just before his unit was sent to Iraq to pursue a political career) flagrantly lied about every element of that dangerous incident, in which Walz got drunk and was caught driving at 96 miles per hour. They completely inverted the truth in their completely inaccurate version of events -- which have been contradicted by court documents and the police. One of the related lies, that he failed the field sobriety test because of hearing loss due to his military service, was also utterly untrue. And now this week, we learned that Walz has been lying about how his own children were conceived (a creepy and bizarre echo of Joe Biden's serial lies about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of members of his own immediate family). Apparently eager to play the attack dog against JD Vance and Republicans, leaning into a fabricated claim that the GOP is looking to ban or undermine IVF treatments, Walz told a "personal" story, over and over again:
It turns out that Tim and Gwen Walz did not use IVF to conceive their two kids. They engaged in an entirely different fertility treatment that is completely separate from IVF. But Walz repeatedly linked their story to IVF, in service of a bogus political attack. Does this man tell the truth about anything? Is nothing sacred -- above being exploited, manipulated or lied about for political gain -- to him? Even the New York Times is reporting the truth:
Many have assumed that his family relied on I.V.F. to conceive their two children. Several news outlets, including The New York Times, The Associated Press and The Minnesota Star Tribune, have reported that the family relied on in vitro fertilization. Fertility advocates concluded as much after hearing Mr. Walz talk. In April, the Tim Walz for Governor campaign office mailed out a fund-raising letter in an envelope that read: “My wife and I used I.V.F. to start a family.’’ But when asked if the Walzes wanted to share more details about their effort to conceive, the Harris-Walz campaign recently clarified that the couple did not rely on I.V.F. but rather another common fertility procedure called intrauterine insemination, or I.U.I...The treatments have a key distinction: Unlike I.V.F., I.U.I. does not involve creating or discarding embryos. And so anti-abortion leaders are not trying to restrict the treatment.
It's worth noting that the Trump-Vance ticket, and the Republican Party writ large, is not seeking to restrict IVF whatsoever. Indeed, when a court decision thrust the issue into a spotlight in Alabama, the deep red state's GOP-dominated government moved swiftly to make crystal clear that IVF was not in jeopardy. Realizing Walz had gotten caught, the Harris campaign put out a statement from Walz's wife, which uses a lot of words to deflect away from her husband's untruths. It does, however, indirectly confirm that they didn't, in fact, go through IVF:
“Like millions of families across the country, for years, Tim and I tried to start a family through fertility treatments. We followed the journey that is infertility -- the anxiety, the agony, and the desperation that can eat away at your soul. Knowing that pain, I cannot fathom the cruelty of politicians who want to take away the freedom for couples to access the care they need...Our fertility journey was an incredibly personal and difficult experience. Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time – not even sharing the details with our wonderful and close family. The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next door neighbor. She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process. I’d rush home from school and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track. Many of our closest family and friends were surprised when we shared these experiences so many years later.”
Opening up about a complicated and difficult personal experience like dealing with infertility can be laudable. Doing so in order to rain down false political attacks on opponents is another story, especially if the "incredibly personal and difficult" details you're sharing aren't true. Did Kamala Harris' team not vet this man? Or did they vet him, turn up all of this shamelessness and dishonor, and decided it didn't matter, or they'd be able to get away with it? Both are plausible. I'll leave you with a pretty bruising line from Vance about Walz, delivered at a law enforcement-themed campaign stop in Wisconsin:
As I've written previously, Chicago is a grimly fitting host city for this political party's convention: