[PM] The Kamala Harris campaign, apparently trying to rehabilitate Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz’s spotty military record, claimed Thursday that Walz was the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "Walz, who served in Congress as a Democratic representative from Minnesota, did sit on the Veterans Affairs Committee. He was even the ranking member. But he was never the chairman," Real Clear Politics reports.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was technically correct when she called her running mate "the top Democrat on the Veterans Committee," but he was not the head of that committee and her campaign took that description a notch higher. A statement from the campaign said "after 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired Veterans Affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform — and as Vice President of the United States, he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families."
The Harris campaign dimissed the error as "an innocent mistake" made by staffers, RCP noted.
"Facts, schmacts!"
"Governor Walz was ranking member/top Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs," a spokesman for the Harris campaign said, for the 115th Congress between 2017 and 2018.
A spokesman for Illinois Republican Rep. Mike Bost, current chairman of the committee, told RCP the same, saying that "Rep. Walz was only ever ranking member and he served in that role from 2017-2019."
Republican presidential candidate J.D. Vance, a real Iraq veteran, has eviscerated Walz’s military record, which the governor has actually used to campaign on. In a recent interview, Vance referred to reports that Walz "retired" from the Army National Guard just as his battalion was shipping out to Iraq. He withdrew from the military two years before the end of a six-year reenlistment contract.
Former United States Marine Corps (USMC) enlisted man Vance did deploy to Iraq. "I mean, your job as a senior enlisted guy in a unit is to keep your people safe. That's not a job you can switch out of on a moment's notice," Vance told the Daily Mail. "So if he abandoned his troops before they went to Iraq or wherever ... absolutely shameful," he added.
Speaking of Walz’s claims of combat experience, Vance further told a reporter Wednesday that the governor should "not pretend to be something that you’re not."
"What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage," Vance said. "Do not pretend to be something that you’re not, and if he wants to criticize me for getting an Ivy League education, I’m proud of the fact that my mamaw supported me, that I was able to make something of myself." 
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