Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵Thread🧵

I know it’s difficult to keep track of all of Tim Walz’s “stolen valor,” exaggerations & false claims about his time in the military.

I tried to compile as many as I could, as well as a few egregious cases of the media spinning for him.

Buckle in, there’s a lot. ⤵️

First, the false claims. To avoid a sort of journalistic stolen valor, I want to be clear: others did this work.

I’ll try to source as well as I can, starting with the latest Walz whopper: saying he took part in the Afghanistan surge in a 2010 debate.

From @NoVA_Campaigns:

There’s been a lot of good reporting. Perhaps none better than from @ChuckRossDC of the Free Beacon.

His first is on that Afghanistan claim, citing Walz’s repeated description of himself as a veteran of “Operation Enduring Freedom,” the gov’t name of the fight in Afghanistan.

@ChuckRossDC also scooped that Pelosi thanked Walz for his “service on the battlefield.”

Rather than point out that he wasn’t ever on a battlefield, Walz thanked her back.

Walz has trotted out other versions of this “battlefield” claim.

As @JDVance pointed out recently, Walz—while trying to ban “assault weapons”—compared them to weapons he had carried “in war.”

The problem? Walz has never been on a battlefield. Or in a war.

In fact, when Walz’s unit deployed, he retired, leaving his soldiers in the lurch without one of their senior officers.

Unsurprisingly, the soldiers who did deploy don’t exactly think fondly of Walz. @CaitlinDoornbos & @jchristenson_ talked to them.

And Walz has also made it a habit to mislead about his rank when he retired.

Here’s @AsheSchow with the explainer:

And, finally — and pivoting us to the spin on this — the campaign claimed that Walz chaired the House Veterans Commitee.

He didn’t, but as @PhilipWegmann points out, tons of outlets didn’t bother to fact check these claims, including @AP and @nytimes

@CBSNews did, too, on Instagram.

Theirs is allegedly a “fact-check.”

What facts are here? And how are they checked, exactly?

Most outlets corrected their reporting when it became clear that none of them bothered to interrogate what the Dems had told them about Walz’s supposed chairmanship.

But not @USATODAY. Might be a good time to correct!

That wasn’t all from that @USATODAY piece, though.

They also claimed that these attacks were an example of “swift boating,” a reference to criticisms of Kerry in 2004, used as a stand-in for unsubstantiated or baseless claims related to a candidate’s military service.

Lots of other outlets have done this, too.

Here’s @politico, @CNN, @washingtonpost and @NPR (because I can only have four screenshots in a tweet).

And two more from @MSNBC and @NYMag.

The only problem? None of these claims are unsubstantiated! Non-mainstream journalists did the actual work of investigating them.

Perhaps the corporate press could learn a thing or two about what real journalism entails.

Because there’s more where that came from.

Rather than investigate the actual claims, @CNN fact checked the criticism from @JDVance.

@washingtonpost fact checked the real reporting from @ChuckRossDC and the @FreeBeacon.

The “facts” elucidated by their “checking” here are less than convincing. Give them a read.

@AP did this, too. The convenient timing of his retirement apparently isn’t evidence of anything.

Nothing gets by these guys.

Back to @CNN, who went out of their way to validate my disdain for “analysis.”

They called @JDVance’s criticism a “troll.”

Actually providing the public scrutiny to someone seeking to be one heartbeat away from the nuclear codes.

That’s somehow a “troll.”

Okay.

And then there were the efforts to obfuscate by providing context.

I thought it couldn’t get worse than this @nytimes headline.

Then I read the piece. Here’s just a couple highlights (more at my newsletter piece on the subject.)

I’m running out of space but I couldn’t leave out this ridiculous headline from @MSNBC.

For the takedown of @voxdotcom, read this great thread from @peterjhasson

I joined the @MegynKellyShow alongside @redsteeze to talk about some of this. If you didn’t catch it, give it a watch/download.

The whole episode is well worth your time. I’m on at the end.

I know you don’t need me to tell you why this matters.

But instead of applying the least bit of scrutiny or accountability for a Democratic candidate for VP, the media are actively trying to hide the blemishes on his resume.

Apparently, the press would rather talk about Walz’s vibes.

How about some journalism instead?

There’s more than I could fit in a thread, even for a quick piece. Link to it is here at my newsletter, @Holden_Court: open.substack.com/pub/drewholden…

@Holden_Court As you can imagine, these threads take time, and patience to sort through the…less than exciting and uplifting reading required.

If you’d like to contribute to the beer fund to keep me going, link is here: paypal.com/donate/?busine…