Former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi excoriated Republicans for his or her assaults towards Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s navy document, saying the broadsides amounted to a “chapter of their concepts.”
“They don’t have something to say in order that they make up issues,” the California Democrat mentioned Sunday.
Pelosi spoke to MSNBC’s Jen Psaki as Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance continued to accuse Walz — his Democratic competitor — of “stolen valor.” Walz enlisted two days after his seventeenth birthday and served for twenty-four years within the Military Nationwide Guard. He responded to floods and tornados and was deployed on energetic obligation abroad earlier than he retired in 2005 as he was contemplating working for Congress. He achieved one of many highest enlisted ranks however by no means noticed fight, a reality he has acknowledged.
His unit later deployed to Iraq in 2006 after his retirement. Republicans have sought to characterize his departure as a dereliction of obligation to keep away from deployment, constructing on GOP assaults from a number of years in the past, and pounced on Walz’s previous statements that he carried “weapons of warfare.”
“When Tim Walz was requested by his nation to go to Iraq, you recognize what he did? He dropped out of the Military and allowed his unit to go with out him,” Vance claimed final week. The assertion doesn’t align with the precise timeline of occasions.
(Vance himself served within the Marine Corps for 4 years of energetic obligation service and went to Iraq in a non-combat position for six months.)
Pelosi mentioned Democrats ought to proceed to hit again on the GOP assaults with pressure, pointing to the spate of mistruths leveled by Vance and Trump at current rallies.
“They need to simply dismiss it as a result of if individuals lie, as they’re mendacity, and also you hear the lie sufficient instances, it type of turns into some form of accepted of their group,” Pelosi mentioned. “And so you must say ‘No, that didn’t occur.’”
“The truth needs to be pushed house,” she added. “I’m not one to let their misrepresentations persist.”