On Wednesday’s edition of NBC’s “MTP Now,” NBC News Chief Political Analyst Chuck Todd stated that 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) did avoid deploying to Iraq but “stolen valor’s an absurd accusation.”
Todd said, “[A]t a minimum, I think what the Trump campaign is hoping to do is make it harder to send him into a military community, make it so that this story, so when he goes to North Carolina to try to woo — where I think he could be helpful — to woo military veterans or goes to an Arizona, goes to a Georgia, … that, at a minimum, this story trails him. That, at a minimum, there’s somebody out there asking him a question about it. So, this is one of those stories where it’s sort of — does the Harris campaign suddenly not put him in those settings because they don’t want –? And maybe that’s exactly what the Trump campaign is hoping for, that –. This is not — you can sit here and debate, he left when he left. It doesn’t — he also had kids, maybe he was like, I’m not going, and this is a time for me to go. I don’t think he’d be the first military veteran who [has] made that decision, hey, I had served my time, I had fulfilled my duty that I agreed upon in order to qualify for the G.I. Bill, all those things. But it does probably make it harder for the Harris campaign to deploy him specifically in the I have a feeling — it’s certainly what I think the Trump campaign hopes here.”
He continued, “I don’t think this is one of those where — oh, this — I’m sorry, if you’re going to use a phrase he used a weapon of war and somehow say he was here. I think stolen valor’s an absurd accusation.”
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