Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s (D) former superior officer’s remarks on the “backdoor technique” used to “leave” before deployment did not quiet outrage for purported “stolen valor.”
Along with his extreme views on gender ideology, DEI, and all things Marxist, the governor also brought a chronic tension between his record and his public persona to the Democratic Party ticket when he teamed up with Vice President Kamala Harris as running mate. While fact-checks had produced a statement claiming the lawmaker had “misspoke” about serving “in combat,” former Minnesota National Guard Command Sgt. Maj. Doug Julin addressed the issue of how he managed to escape deployment.
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Laura Coates, Julin detailed the steps and timing of Walz’s departure, a point raised by Donald Trump Jr., who said that Walz “went back on his word and abandoned his guys.”
Julin stated, “We received a notification in the fall of 2004 advising us to travel to Iraq within the upcoming year.” Start preparing your team, putting your team together, and putting the process in motion.”
The command team, my boss, and the battalion commander planned a meeting at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, in February 2005 to bring everyone together, give the battalion commanders and their staff a chance to get to know one another and begin the process of team-building. Governor Tim Walz, also known as Sgt. Maj. Tim Walz at the time, attended the meeting and participated actively. Following the meeting, Walz inquired about a conversation with him and gave specifics about his plans to run for Congress, which he officially filed on February 10, 2005.
Walz informed Julin at a later meeting at Camp Ripley in March or April that he was “moving on with the battalion,” but he would retire in May of 2005.
Julin received word the next month that Walz had “quit.”
In his CNN interview, Julin said, “The first question that arose from this was how Tim Walz left without talking to me since I was his next level of leadership.” “The second issue was that Tim Walz should have come back to me and discussed why he was going forward or not going forward now after he previously informed me he was going forward.”
Although Coates attempted to emphasize that Walz might retire after serving for four more years than the required twenty, the sergeant major made it apparent that Walz’s approach and his broken word were the problem.
“Tim Walz went above and beyond me, and he knew the procedures and processes,” Julin remarked. I went there primarily to seek support from someone. That process was only a backdoor.
During the conversation, the governor reacted negatively to Second Amendment rights and had to defend statements he made regarding deployment in 2018 that went back to his early days in Congress. “We can ensure that the weapons of war I carried throughout the conflict are solely in that location.”
“The Governor misspoke when he made the argument for why weapons of mass destruction should never be on our streets or in our schools,” a campaign official said in response to those comments. Unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance, who put the gun lobby ahead of our children, he handled weapons of war and firmly thinks that only military personnel qualified to carry those lethal weapons should have access to them.
