Have you noticed that “gaffe-“prone vice presidential candidate Tim Walz misspeaks quite a bit, tends to use “sloppy” rhetoric, and is regularly compelled to “clarify” his statements? Really, Walz lies a lot. Yet, a political press that not very long ago featured “lie counters” on chyrons for Donald Trump is awash in euphemisms to cover for Walz’s deceptions.
It’s one thing to exaggerate your political accomplishments or lie about your political opponents. Walz isn’t the first politician to spin some fiction about a drunk driving arrest. All in the game.
Lying about serving in war, on the other hand, is a shameful appropriation of bravery and honor. Years ago, it was unlikely a candidate could recover from the indignity of misleading the public about his military service. Today, apparently, it’s no big deal. Walz, picked by Kamala Harris two weeks ago as a running mate, won’t even answer any genuine questions about his history of misleading voters.
And make no mistake, Walz isn’t being “accused” of lying by the GOP, as so many in the press contend. He’s been caught on tape. Indeed, Walz, who also often misrepresented his rank, spent years — at best — allowing voters to believe he’d courageously gone off to Iraq or Afghanistan when in fact he was in Italy, and then avoided deployment to enter politics.
Lying about fighting in a war is unethical and dishonorable. It’s nothing new. Lying about how your children were conceived to score some cheap political points is sort of demented.
“Thank God for IVF. My wife and I have two beautiful children,” Walz told MSNBC not long ago. In April, Walz sent out a fund-raising letter that claimed: “My wife and I used I.V.F. to start a family.’’
Walz’s claim that his family used in vitro fertilization to conceive was not some throwaway line. The IVF scaremongering is a central issue for Democrats. Numerous speakers at the DNC have warned that Donald Trump wants to ban IVF, an accusation that has no basis in reality.
Numerous pieces have focused on the IVF tribulations of the Walz family. “Already, Walz has captivated crowds in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan with the story of his daughter’s birth, made possible through in vitro fertilization treatments,” the Associated Press reported on Aug. 8 in a piece headlined “In 60-year-old Tim Walz, Kamala Harris found a partner to advocate for reproductive rights.”
In one video, you can watch Walz even getting emotional talking about IVF.” “I remember it like it was yesterday,” the veep candidate claims. “I’m not crying, you’re crying.”
This is sociopathic behavior, because, in truth, the Walzes never used IVF; they used IUI, which is not fraught with the moral questions surrounding the destruction of embryos. It’s a fertility procedure in which sperm is placed in the uterus during ovulation to increase the chances of pregnancy. A big difference.
Or, in other words, Walz relied on IVF in the same way he carried an AR-15 in “war” (which was a lie twice over, incidentally, since semiauto AR-15s aren’t used in combat by Americans who deploy to war zones.)
Wherever you stand on the issue of IVF, it’s clear that Walz used his children as cudgels against Catholics and other orthodox Christians who oppose the practice of IVF on moral grounds and tend to vote for Republicans.
Now, there is always the small chance that Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and vice presidential candidate of the United States, was unaware of which procedure was being used to help conceive his children. If that’s the case, he’s too dumb to be in office.
So how does the media frame this revelation?
The New York Times contends that the Walz camp has “clarified” his statements. An Axios piece on the matter is headlined, “Gwen Walz sheds light on fertility journey, clarifies they did not use IVF.” CNN says, “Gwen Walz reveals she underwent a different treatment, not IVF, in new details about fertility struggles.”
She revealed new details? What are they talking about? Tim Walz was caught lying about IVF and now his camp is compelled to admit it. They aren’t “shedding light” on their “fertility journey” or “clarifying” a story. This wasn’t hyperbole or “sloppy” rhetoric, just a lie.
A weird, demented lie.