One example of this is how Bloomberg News recently handled the controversy. It surrounds one of Walz’s favorite tall tales – the implication that he served in Iraq when he actually dropped out of the Army right after his unit was informed they would be deployed there.
Bloomberg reporter Josh Green recently published a piece entitled “Walz’s Holy Trinity of Normal: Coach, Teacher, Veteran”. It appeared to be a very positive profile of him, and the author’s contempt for Walz’s conservative counterpart, JD Vance, is clear.
However, the piece repeated the lie that Walz was a combat veteran in Iraq, stating: "At the time, the Iraq War was ongoing (and going badly), and he stood out as Command Sergeant Major Walz, a 24-year veteran of the Army National Guard, recently returned from serving in Iraq as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. He’d retired to teach high school and coach football."
This was quietly edited the next day to switch out the word “Italy” for “Iraq”, which is a more accurate reflection of where he served. The correction is noted in a footnote at the bottom of the page, but oddly, it does not appear directly after the article. Instead, the article on Walz is followed by an article on Chinese goods, one on breakdancing in the Olympics, and one on flooding from Hurricane Debby; you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page before they explain: “Corrects to remove reference to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fifth paragraph; an earlier version of this story corrected where Walz served overseas in the third paragraph”.
What they don’t bother to mention in their correction is how they managed to get such an important piece of information wrong, leaving many to wonder whether the writer or editor failed to fact check the story, or if they simply repeated a lie that they were told by Walz himself and took his word for it.
Numerous reports expose Walz's embellishments of his military service
Either way, the incident isn’t doing much to quell the rampant criticism of Walz and his “stolen valor.” Numerous reports have exposed how Walz accepted a conditional promotion to the rank of Command Sergeant Major during his time in the National Guard only to retire abruptly just after his battalion was informed that they were going to be deployed to Iraq. He was, however, assigned to a post in Italy briefly, where his battalion supported Operation Enduring Freedom, but he never served in a combat zone.
Geoff Ingersoll, the Editor in Chief of The Daily Wire, called out Bloomberg for its inaccurate reporting (including misidentifying the location involved in Operation Enduring Freedom, or OEF) and their shady correction, writing on X: “Wow, this is wild. (Also OEF was Afghanistan, NOT Iraq.) Walz should be forced to confirm or deny whether he misled Bloomberg’s @JoshuaGreen, who is still reporting to this day that Walz did a tour in Iraq. And Green should come out and say whether he was misled. This is false then and it’s false now.”
Green later took responsibility for the mistake in a post on X, saying the error was his, but the damage was already done as embellishments about Walz's military career continue to make headlines. You know it’s bad when even CNN feels the need to call you out on your lies.
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