Drew Holden Profile picture
Aug 12, 2024 25 tweets 12 min read Read on X
🧵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: Image
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.
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@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.
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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. Image
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. Image
And Walz has also made it a habit to mislead about his rank when he retired.

Here’s @AsheSchow with the explainer:
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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 Image
@CBSNews did, too, on Instagram.

Theirs is allegedly a “fact-check.”

What facts are here? And how are they checked, exactly? Image
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!
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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. Image
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).


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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.
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Because there’s more where that came from.

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


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

Nothing gets by these guys.

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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.
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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.)


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I’m running out of space but I couldn’t leave out this ridiculous headline from @MSNBC. Image
For the takedown of @voxdotcom, read this great thread from @peterjhasson


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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. Image
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?
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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…
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@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…

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More from @DrewHolden360

Sep 3
🧵Thread🧵

I know there’s a lot going on but we just had a media conspiracy implode that I think captures something important about the corporate press.

Did you hear about how Trump was allegedly going after John Bolton as retribution for his criticism?

Well…follow along ⤵️
We saw a week straight of media suggestions that Trump was abusing the powers of the state to deal out “retribution” to John Bolton following the news that the FBI (“Trump’s DOJ!” headlines rang out) raided his house.

We were in “unsettling” times, to hear @nytimes tell it. Image
The *Editorial Board* at @nytimes put out an even more dramatic statement, asking who Trump’s next payback victim after Bolton would be.

They dubbed the raid “revenge.”

Democracy was in truly troubled waters. Image
Read 24 tweets
Aug 26
🧵Thread🧵

A single poll has bootstrapped a media narrative that DC residents are outraged by Trump’s takeover.

I poked around the cross tabs of the poll — of 600 or so of DC’s more comfortable residents — and I think it’s pretty suspect.

How come? Follow along: ⤵️
Let’s start with the poll. The @washingtonpost talked to 604 people, of whom 90% — 90%! — self-described as living in “very good” or “good” neighborhoods.

So, fine. 80% of people who like where they live in DC are upset. Image
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But even beyond that, it’s worth asking whether this poll really captures DC’s opinion.

In the poll, only 31% describe crime as a “serious” or “very serious” problem in DC.

When @washingtonpost asked this same question in May, *50%* said it was a serious problem.

What gives? Image
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Read 26 tweets
Jul 15
🧵Thread🧵

I feel like I’m losing my mind about the Biden autopen pardons.

The former president said he made every decision. His staff says that he didn’t actually make the final call on thousands of them.

We’re supposed to treat this as normal?

I try to unpack. ⤵️
This got new life from a Biden interview w/ @nytimes.

NYT leads by repeating Biden’s claim that he made the calls…burying the admissions that 1) he really didn’t & 2) where he allegedly did, the aids sending details to the autopen weren’t in the room when the call was made… Image
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…instead, they relied on what senior staff had allegedly heard, which was then passed along.

The piece ends with the revelation that Biden’s then-chief of staff gave the final sign off.

Given what the former admin has lied about, why should we trust this reporting of events? Image
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Read 20 tweets
Jun 11
🧵Thread🧵

The coverage of the anti-ICE riots in LA is perhaps the clearest example of advocacy “journalism” in Trump’s second term.

Reading the reporting, you would never know the most significant fact: the American people support Trump’s deportations.

Follow along ⤵️
First, the facts about the riots.

You’ve seen the burning cars, looting & clashes between police & protestors.

Demonstrators blocked the freeway, attacked ICE agents, all in an effort to prevent the deportations of illegal aliens. Trump deployed troops to allow ICE to operate. Image
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As @MarkHalperin and @seanspicer discussed, the situation in LA is so tranquil that the mayor has instituted a curfew for the city.
Read 25 tweets
May 29
🧵Thread🧵

The new book “Original Sin” from Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson recounts the effort to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline ahead of the election. The authors point to many guilty parties.

The one glaring omission? Their colleagues in the corporate press. Follow along ⤵️ Image
There are numerous dramatic reveals. The Biden team considered condoning him to a wheelchair? Maybe in his fog he forgot about the border?

But as I worked on a review for @commonplc, the one thought that I kept coming back to was that you can’t tell this story without the press.
Perhaps no one was more vital to the continued fiction that Biden had it together than the media.

Tapper and Thompson even highlight some of the telling moments.

Did they forget what the media reported?
Read 21 tweets
May 20
🧵THREAD🧵

Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a tragedy I know first-hand.

But our sympathy can’t silence questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, clarified just days ago by the Hur tape.

The media tried to bury the story then. They’re trying again now.

I’ve got the receipts. ⤵️
When the report first came out in 2024, outlets rushed to demean Hur, accusing him of serving as a Republican hatchet man.

Just look at this take from @USATODAY, who assembled sympathetic voices to make the case that Hur “crossed the line.” They found an expert to call it a “disgrace” and then featured the obviously unbiased Eric Holder to lead a section titled “Way too many gratuitous remarks.”

The audio makes clear that Hur, if anything, played down how alarming the claims were.Image
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(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)
Read 26 tweets

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