CNN Guest Blasts Harris Campaign’s On Walz Military Credentials, Ex-Hillary Adviser Deflects

On “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer,” former Deputy Communications Director Bryan Lanza discussed the Harris Walz campaign's early “stolen valor” controversy and the humiliation that followed.

Tim Walz was caught exaggerating his military credentials, claiming a title he never actually earned, and implying that he served in a combat zone in a widely circulated video (also shared by Kamala HQ, the campaign's official rapid response page) where he calls for an “assault weapons ban,” using his fabricated experience in a war zone to legitimize his anti-gun stance.

After the fallout, the campaign quietly edited his biography on their website.

The Daily Caller reported:

(Bryan) Lanza appeared on “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer” alongside former Hillary Clinton campaign senior advisor Karen Finney, where the two discussed how the Harris' campaign quietly removed “retired command sergeant major” from their website after receiving a wave of backlash from Republicans over the mention. Lanza began by discussing Trump's press conference Thursday afternoon before noting how he had not heard Trump discuss how the biography was edited, stating Walz “sort of admitted that he lied.”

“What I didn‘t hear though, which Trump‘s press conference sort of stepped on, was the fact that Governor Tim Walz had to edit his biography. He sort of admitted that he lied on his biography for the past 20 years, and then Kamala Harris and her campaign had to correct it today. That is a huge backpedal; that‘s an embarrassment. 24 hours into this, you're dissecting the guy‘s military record, and you're finding huge discrepancies that they have to change their biography,” Lanza continued.

After referring to himself as a retired command sergeant major, Walz's bio was scrubbed after the Minnesota National Guard released a statement to Just the News on Wednesday correcting the record on how the governor was only conditionally promoted to the rank. After the conditional promotion, Walz notably failed to perform the required training in order to permanently hold the title and instead retired as a master sergeant in 2005, according to the statement.

This isn't the first time Walz's military career has come under scrutiny. Walz has faced accusations of stolen valor since his first run for United States Congress in 2006, suggesting a failure in the Harris campaign's vetting process. In biographies and numerous statements, he described himself as deploying in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, implying to that he was in Afghanistan, while glossing over the fact that his entire deployment was stationed in Italy.

The Harris campaign later released a statement to CNN saying Walz “would never insult or undermine any American's service to this country,” noting how he “carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times.”

Instructors at shooting ranges across the country have also carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times — but unlike Tim Walz, they didn't equate carrying, firing or training others with weapons of war to actually participating in war, and more importantly, they didn't claim to have combat experience that qualified them to infringe on the Second Amendment.