Does a video show Tim Walz lying about having served in a U.S. military deployment to Afghanistan? No, that's not true: Walz told the American Legion about a 2011 trip to Afghanistan he took as a member of Congress. He did not say he had served in Afghanistan as a soldier.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) by conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza on September 1, 2024. It shows a clip from a speech in which Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, says:
When I talk to my constituents in southern Minnesota -- I don't care if they're Republican, independent, Dem -- it doesn't matter to them. When I tell them, 'When I was in Afghanistan, you know what our troops were worried about? They were worried about their families' health care and they were worried about their pensions.' I said, 'Do you think that's really what you want them to be worrying about when their friends and colleagues are being shot on a daily basis?' And yet at the end of the day, they have to worry about that.
The caption said:
'When I was in Afghanistan,' says the man who was never in Afghanistan. It is impossible to 'misspeak' about this. Nor is it a question of 'incorrect grammar.' This is a stolen valor involving a habitual liar
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tues Sep 2 14:20:59 2024 UTC)
"Stolen valor" refers to the practice of making false claims about receiving military honors, which became a federal crime in 2005 (archived here).
Walz made no pretensions about having served in the U.S. military in Afghanistan in his address to the American Legion on February 28, 2012 (archived here), the source of the clip in the post on X. At the 0:43 mark of the YouTube video of the speech, the man who introduced Walz said the congressman had held discussions with U.S. troops during a 2011 visit "overseas:"
Last fall he made a trip to visit our service members overseas. During that visit he was taken aback by the thrust of his discussions with many of the troops. The troops weren't focused on IEDs [improvised explosive devices], snipers, the weapons aimed at them. They were more concerned with the budget discussions that mentioned increases in the cost of Tricare for them and their families, a civilian type of 401(k) retirement program, and reduction in troop levels. Instead of paying attention to those who would do them harm, they were focused on their supposed friends here in Washington.
Walz visited Afghanistan as part of a congressional delegation during precisely this timeframe, according to an article on the U.S. Army's website (archived here).
During the speech, Walz said he had been in Afghanistan, but was talking about his role in ensuring that Congress adopts budgetary measures to support U.S. troops stationed there, not about any role as a soldier there. This becomes clear at the 10:25 mark of the YouTube video, which is shortly before the clip in the post on X:
[The American Legion] is concerned about many things. One of them ... is teaching our children what it means to be an American, what it means to have that responsibility, what Americanism means to us, and what responsibility means. You do that every day. What we need to make sure is, the budgets and the decisions we're making here reflect what the American people want.
He then made his comments about his conversations with troops in Afghanistan. Following these remarks, video shows the audience, including several people in uniform, giving Walz a standing ovation -- an unlikely response had he actually just committed the crime of "stolen valor."
JD Vance, running for vice president on the Republican ticket, explicitly accused Walz of "stolen valor" in a statement to the press on August 7, 2024 (archived here).
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Tim Walz can be found here; other fact checks on the 2024 presidential election here.
