Walz says his military ‘record speaks for itself’

Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, responding to Republicans who called him out for claiming that he carried guns into war. Listen, you said that you carried weapons in war, but you have never deployed actually in a war zone. A campaign official said that you misspoke. Did you? Well, first of all, I'm incredibly proud. I've done 24 years of wearing the uniform of this country. Equally proud of my service in a public school classroom. Whether it's Congress or, or the governor. my record speaks for itself, but I think, people are coming here to know me. I speak like they do. I speak candidly. I wear my emotions on my sleeves, and, I speak, especially passionately about, about our children being shot in schools and around around guns. So, I think people know me. They know who I am. They know where, where my heart is. Did you misspeak, as the campaign has said? Yeah. I said we were talking about in this case, this was after school shooting, the idea of carrying these weapons of war. And, my wife, the English. You're telling my grammar's not always correct. I just want to remind you, here are those 2018 comments that Republicans have been highlighting. Listen, I'll take my kick in the butt for the NRA. I spent 25 years in the Army, and I hunt, and I gave the money back. And I'll tell you what I have been doing. I've been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment. But we can do background checks. We can do CDC research. We can make sure we don't have reciprocal carry among states, and we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are. And I carried and war is the operative part. There. Again, Tim Walz was never in combat, but he did serve in the National Guard for 24 years. Let's bring in Dana Bash again. She's in Savannah, Georgia, where this interview took place. Dana, an important exchange on an issue that has been dogging him since he became the vice presidential nominee. Yes. No question about it. And look, this is such a different process than any campaign goes through to pick the running mate. There usually is a pretty substantial vetting process. I don't know if the Harris campaign, the baby campaign that it was at the time knew about these, these comments. My suspicion, my suspicion is no, because I think they used it in some early, early videos. But it's the kind of thing that you want to kind of be buttoned up about and not take weeks to kind of clean up. it is the first interview that he has done. So it's the first chance he has gotten to try to clean it up. Aside from that spokesperson from the campaign that I was talking about. but it's the kind of broader question of who is this guy? And the way that they put him out there at the beginning of the, when he was picked and also at the convention, is kind of who he is. He is a coach. He is a father. And that's definitely the kind of person they would have put out there. They're talking less about him as a veteran. He has a tremendous, record as a veteran, and he is somebody who served. And, you know, a lot of people say he should be thankful for it. And I'm not here to disagree with that. Yeah, I mean, the 24 years are 24 years. so that speaks for itself. The question is now whether voters will care about the other part of this. Dana, thank you very much for all of this great interview and for joining us. Thanks for having me. And joining our panel here, Sharon, Michael Singleton, Jamal Simmons, and Maggie Haberman. Maggie, this is a core part of what the Trump campaign has been spending a lot of their time on, the Trump campaign manager, Trump himself. Are they frustrated, though, that it feels like maybe it hasn't stuck as much as they would like it to? there is a a singular obsession that the Trump campaign has with this issue. As you note, my biggest and I don't think it's an illegitimate point to ask questions about. But Tim Waltz's the number two. He's not running for president. Kamala Harris is the number one. And so they have spent I think it's five weeks now focusing on this issue. And for three of those weeks at least, they were doing nothing to define the vice president. So, you know, I think they are frustrated in part because there were so many attacks on JD Vance and JD Vance had a rough time in that first week out after the RNC. And I think a lot of this is about that, frankly, I have seen little sign that voters care much about this. Again, they are voting for the person who is running for president, not the number two, which is also true with Trump and JD Vance. Yeah, yeah. And look, we see that in the numbers. I mean, JD Vance has really taken a hit in his unfavorable impression. But Jamal just real talk though. Why not just say you misspoke. Well he was a little surprised. He did say I own my mistakes. He did say that in his answer I own my mistakes. So I think he went on to talk about, you know, put them into some context. Here's the reality. I think, as Maggie was just saying, people aren't really judging this, but I was in the vice president's office. People spent a lot of time going after Kamala Harris on the Republican side. Turns out didn't make much of a difference, right. As soon as he launched as a presidential candidate, nobody seemed to remember, what happened before when she was a vice presidential candidate? The thing that struck me the most when I was watching that she said something that was very Kamala Harris. We started talking about the opportunity economies, started talking about investing in families. And when she did that, she said, so that people can buy car seats, clothes, cribs. It was very specific. This is the way that when she goes out and she campaigns with the American people, she talks to them not just about the big policy, but about the way that they interact with that policy in their own specific lives. Sure, Michael, what do you make of I mean, whilst I mean, by the way, it was at this interview in a way that is not atypical for, you know, a post-convention interview, but what did you make? I mean, I don't think it really matters whether or not he was there or not. I know some conservatives have attempted to make a big deal about this. You're right. Most voters don't care about the number two. They care about the number one. But I do think there's a possibility for this to become an issue. He could have just said, look, I misspoke. It happens all the time in politics. In the heat of the moment. I think most people would understand that. But that's not what he said, is that my record speaks for itself. Or does it? We don't know what your record is. Maybe if you're in your home state, people may know, but not the American people. Then he said, well, I wear my emotions on my chest. Well, that's showcasing some level of instability, not stability. Then he said, well, people know me again. No, we don't know you. That's why you're doing this interview. Then he said, well, my wife said, my grammar sometimes isn't always correct, but those were terrible answers. And so you're literally making an issue that should really be a non-issue, potentially an issue, by the way he respond to when he simply could have said, look, I misspoke, I apologize, let's move on to something else. And he did. As is often the case, the VP nominee is the person on the ticket has less experience than the other person. And so you get issues like this that come up.