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Is Tim Walz a big fat liar?

Published on 51 Comments on Is Tim Walz a big fat liar?

Let us investigate the vast history of lying by Gov. Tim Walz as alleged by the Trump campaign:

  • Retired from the National Guard as a command sergeant major.
    He did rise to the rank of command sergeant major, but upon retirement his rank reverted to master sergeant.
  • Had children via IVF.
    Walz almost always refers only to "fertility treatments," but a couple of times has used the term IVF. In fact he and his wife underwent IUI, commonly referred to as IVF but actually a different, more affordable fertility treatment.
  • Won an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce (2006).
    It was the Junior Chamber of Commerce,
  • Taught in China for a year through a program at Harvard University  (2006).
    It was a program affiliated with Harvard.
  • Earned the title of Nebraska Citizen-Soldier of the Year (1989).
    He did indeed earn this award, but so did 51 other people. I'm not sure how this counts even under the strictest definition, but I'm including it for completeness.
  • Referred one time to "weapons of war, that I carried in war" (2018).
    Has admitted this was a misstatement.
  • Denied he had been drinking when he was pulled over in 1995 for speeding (2006).
    Possibly the only serious falsehood, from 18 years ago. However, he corrected the record himself six years ago when he ran for governor.

This is a pretty desperate list. Added up, it's maybe 10% as much as a single routine lie from Donald Trump. But YMMV.

51 thoughts on “Is Tim Walz a big fat liar?”

  1. iamr4man

    Republicans have a special mirror that they like to use. The mirror reflects any small deviation from truth by a Democrat as a hideous lie. And it reflects any lie from a Republican no matter how egregious as small and insignificant.

      2. Marlowe

        Less mere playing along than providing backup singers, a bunch of dancers, and buying unlimited booze for the band.

  3. MF

    Since when it's IUI commonly referred to as IVF?

    IUI is Intra Uterine Insemination, commonly known as artificial insemination.

    IVF is In Vitro Fertilization - fertilizing the egg outside the woman's body and then implanting it in the uterus.

    I assume there are ignorant people who do not know the difference, but Tim Walz is certainly not one of them. Where is an iota of evidence that IUI is commonly referred to as IVF?

    Walz seems to share Biden's habit of fabulism. In contrast, Harris, despite her other faults, does not seem to make up stories about her past, which is why Republicans are not making similar attacks against her.

    1. bebopman

      You have *got* to be kidding. …. I had never even heard of IUI until now. Im assuming it has been around. And I’m betting that a lot of people say “IVF” as a sort of generic shorthand for fertility treatments without knowing what “IVF” specifically stands for. … Kinda like how people say GOP for the Republican Party without knowing that GOP stands for “Giant Orifice Painful”.

      1. MF

        I bet you had heard of artificial insemination, the common name of IUI, and that you knew that artificial insemination and IVF were two different things.

    3. Jerry O'Brien

      I think Tim Walz knows that IVF is not the technology he and Gwen used to have their daughter, but he also knows that IVF would have been there as an option if needed. That's why he finds common cause with anyone who is concerned about the availability of IVF procedures. He has referred to that connection without saying that IVF was used in their case.

        1. Solar

          I guess you didn't read this bit:

          They “come in and say, ‘Oh, I want to do IVF,’” he said.

          “And you start talking about that, and it’s like, ‘Wait, that’s not what I thought it was — where you just put the sperm into the uterus,’ And you have to say, ‘Well, no, that’s intrauterine insemination,’” Griffith added.

          Dr. John Storment, a reproductive endocrinologist in Lafayette, Louisiana, said it’s the patients’ husbands who often get confused.

          1. MF

            I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove.

            Certainly some less educated people will not know what IUI is. So? Walz certainly did - he had been through the process.

            1. Solar

              That you are an idiot and a troll.

              "Since when it's IUI commonly referred to as IVF?"

              Your own article has a specialist saying how common it is for actual patients to mislabel or confuse the two procedures, and that those more commonly doing so are the husbands.

    4. jdubs

      lol, this poor guy. Literally no thoughts of his own.

      What a way to get through each day.....'gosh, what have I been told to think today, ok, grab some coffee and let me go start repeating this....'

    5. Solar

      "Since when it's IUI commonly referred to as IVF?"

      This is funny comming from a troll like you since in the same AP article you posted trying to attack Walz they quote a fertility doctor mentioning that patients commonly mix the two types of treatment and come asking for one when in reality they want the other.

      Troll better MFer.

    6. bbleh

      Lol BIDEN's "habit of fabulism?!?" Compared to the Felon's? Where pretty much every other sentence out of his mouth is demonstrably false?

      Please go back to Trollistan. Thank you.

  4. D_Ohrk_E1

    If I were to guess, I'd estimate that 90% of the population exaggerates on their Linked-In resume and have added a whole host of letters and certificates after their names that are, for all intents and purposes, meaningless associations and papers.

    Someone once played around with Photoshop a few years ago and now it's part of their skillset. How many times have you gone through a Word document to find that someone had no clue about paragraph styles, so they just started typing away? My personal favorite is when two lines in CAD kinda sorta look like they touch but they don't, because Johnny said he knew CAD but the only thing he knew about CAD was what he was reading in a book last night.

    I'm just saying, most people embellish their stories and their resumes on their way to developing their own mythos. The people who deny it -- such as JD Vance -- tend to be the worst offenders.

    And then there is the Mr. Know It All whose ego is fragile, needing to correct people who use colloquial language to show their level of knowledge to others. Vance is a specialist in this.

        1. MF

          The list is too long to fit in this comment.

          Can we start with his coal mining football playing family which was so famously plagiarized from Neil Kinnock?

  6. bebopman

    Referred one time to "weapons of war, that I carried in war" ….

    This would be serious only if he had said it time and time and time again in his many interviews as a candidate, congressman and governor etc. He said it one time? What a lightweight! Trump tells dozens of outright lies in a single speech.

  7. samoore0

    I'm inclined to give Walz a pass on the IVF issue for two reasons. First, If you tell a crowd you had IUI they won't have a clue what you are talking about. It would be a hassle to have to explain it dozens or hundreds of times in the next 3 months. Second, the GQP would love to restrict IVF, so it helps to use that term to get your point across. So, IVF is shorthand for infertility treatments of all kinds because most people already know what it is.

    1. MF

      If you want people to understand you say "artificial insemination".

      "the GQP would love to restrict IVF, so it helps to use that term to get your point across."

      And that is the motivation for the lie - Walz wanted to insert himself into the story. So he lied to do so.

  9. Jasper_in_Boston

    I know Kevin is doing the Lord's work in his evisceration Republican agitprop. but this is very much an example of why/how their BS often works so well. Imagine if the same headline were used by an outlet with 2 million readers: Many people would simply see "Walz" and "Big Fat Liar" — and before you know it we've got a Hillary Benghazi situation on our hands.

    Republicans play the media like Coltrane played the saxophone.

  10. Kalimac

    It's not a misstatement. He did carry weapons of war in war.
    A letter in the Washington Post, Aug. 18, by retired Foreign Service officer Edwina Campbell explains the point. "War" is broader than "combat operations," and any place even well behind the lines could become a "combat zone" if attacked (which is why Campbell says the term isn't used formally). That's -why- Walz was carrying weapons of war - in case his locale was attacked. It wasn't, but many like it have been. He was on active service in a war.

      1. KawSunflower

        Perhap your statement should include an adjective to modify "war." There are memorials to American lives lost in Korea, Vietnam, in several undeclared wars. The US doesn't use Putin's term, "special military pperation."

      2. Solar

        That would be news to all the veterans of the Korean War, Vietnam War, both Iraq Wars, Afghanistan War, plus all the other smaller scale wars the US has been a part of since WW2.

  11. jdubs

    Still scrounging around for something that the media wants to run with.

    The mindless followers will repeat literally anything, but the more general media needs something it can build hours of programming around. Something with drama and an easy, familiar narrative. This one doesnt seem to have lit up the boardrooms, at least not yet.

  12. Jim Carey

    The bad guys always do whatever they can to convince the gullible, and most importantly themselves, that the good guys are the bad guys. Same as it ever was. Just ask Jesus of Nazareth.

    It's personally disappointing to me when a gullible person turns out to have a Bachelor of Science degree (hello Elon...I hope you're listening to this) because they obviously don't have an elementary school level understanding of the concept.

  13. Yehouda

    I suggest introducing the "Trump" unit of dishonesty, and them just saying that the list Kevin gave amount to around 2 microTrump.
    The idea is to always "quantify" dishonesty by the "Trump" unit, so amy discussion of disonesty is automatically associated with Trump.

  15. KJK

    While MAGA is bitching that Walz's 24 years of military service isn't enough, their deity, Orange Jesus (aka Captain Bone Spurs) had daddy help him fake his military deferment, and refers to fallen/captured/injured US soldiers as "suckers and losers"

    He also says that a Presidential award he gives to big $$ contributors is so much better than the MOH.

  16. cld

    RFK, jr, wildlife enthusiast,

    https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-harris-election-08-25-24/index.html

    . . .
    The latest story, originally shared by Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy in a recently resurfaced 2012 interview with Town & Country Magazine, details how Kennedy once used a chainsaw to cut off the head of a dead whale carcass that had washed up on the shores of their family’s home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He then drove the whale’s head back to their home in New York on the roof of the family’s minivan, according to the interview.

    “Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick Kennedy told the magazine. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”

    . . . .

    No mention of what he did with it after he got it home.

  17. Okee Rising

    IVF vs IUI. Harvard vs affiliated with Harvard.

    LOL!

    This hair-splitting fact checking in the era of Trump is beyond absurd.

    Question: Is it true that in blue states they do abortions of babies after they are born all the time? We need a fact check!

    1. Coby Beck

      I've been wanting to mention that for a long time now! I hear these a*holes saying that all the time, and have never heard a member of the press push back in the moment. Not even "we have not been able to verify that". It is such a laughable, grotesque lie and yet only gets a shrug.

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