Desperate times: Trumpers launch Swiftboating 2.0
They're taking a page out of Karl Rove's shameful playbook.
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Donald Trump is down so bad that his campaign is bringing back Republican dirty tricks from 20 years ago.
Kamala Harris is packing arenas and rising in the polls while Trump whines about crowd sizes during incoherent press conferences and in insane Truth Social posts. Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, is a breakout star — a sharp contrast to Trump’s pick, JD Vance, who can’t shake the notion that he’s a creepy weirdo. Put it together and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Trump team is targeting Walz with a sleazy smear campaign that recalls the infamous “swiftboating” attacks against John Kerry. The approach isn’t a coincidence, either: Chris LaCivita, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, coordinated the “swiftboating” smears back in 2004.
Last week, Vance claimed that Walz abandoned his National Guard unit just before it was deployed to Iraq in 2005.
“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him,” Vance said during a speech. He’s also accused Walz of exaggerating his record of service.
Although the New York Times describes these charges as merely “provocative,” they’re actually repulsive lies. Walz retired from the National Guard after 24 of years of service. He put in his request months prior to the unit’s deployment, but Vance suggests Walz was asked to go to Iraq and he quit in response. Meanwhile, other equally shameless Republicans, including former Army officer Tom Cotton, pushed the false narrative that Walz callously ditched his unit to pursue a political career.
“JDVance is right,” Cotton posted on X. “Tim Walz’s unit got orders to Iraq. He could’ve gone with them, but didn’t. He let his troops go to war without him instead.”
Here are the facts: Walz joined the Nebraska National Guard in 1981, two days after his 17th birthday. He was eligible for retirement after 20 years of service in 2001 but re-enlisted after 9/11, according to an interview he did for a Library of Congress oral history project. Walz officially launched his congressional campaign in February 2005, more than a month before the National Guard announced the possible partial mobilization of 2,000 troops. His last day with the Guard was May 16, 2005, and his unit received its official deployment orders on July 14.
Yes, Walz has stated in an interview that he “decided to retire to focus full time on running,” but he was 41 years old with a 4-year-old daughter. During an appearance on The Bulwark podcast, former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Iraq War vet, pointed out that Walz already did what 99 percent of Americans don’t — willingly volunteer for service — and there’s nothing dishonorable about retiring. If Walz’s retirement would’ve compromised the unit, the military could have issued a stop-loss blocking his request. That didn’t happen.
In addition to the swiftboat-style smears, Republicans have accused Walz of “stolen valor” for past remarks that suggested he served in active combat. Last Tuesday, the KamalaHQ social media account posted a video where Walz argued for common-sense gun safety legislation. He said, “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.” (Watch below.)
Walz was deployed after 9/11 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He wasn’t in an active combat zone, so the Harris campaign concedes that he might have misspoke when he said he carried the weapons “in war.” However, he was making a specific point about assault weapons from his personal experience, and as campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told the New York Times, Walz “carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times.”
Walz’s bio described him as a “retired command sergeant major,” one of the top ranks for enlisted personnel. It’s a rank he did achieve, but because he didn’t complete coursework at the US Army Sergeants Major Academy before leaving the National Guard, he technically retired as a master sergeant for benefits purposes. That’s ultimately an issue of semantics, not “stolen valor.”
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These shameful attacks on Walz are straight from the Karl Rove playbook. As Bush’s senior adviser told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace in a 2007 interview, “You look at what [your opponents] claim to be strong on and see if they really are strong on it. And many times, what people tend to offer up as their strength turns out to be actually a weakness when you examine it further … you know, people tend to sometimes in campaigns accentuate things that they think are big and important, and they exaggerate them.”
“Swiftboating” severely damaged Kerry’s presidential campaign, transforming his biggest strength into a weakness and undercutting his momentum at a critical point. LaCivita has directly compared Kerry and Walz, telling RealClearPolitics, “Birds of a feather will be tarred together.” However, there’s reason to believe the Trump campaign’s derivative sequel won’t have the same impact on the Harris/Walz ticket.
The origins of “swiftboating”
Unlike President George W. Bush, Kerry served in Vietnam and spent several months commanding a patrol craft called a “swift boat.” He was injured three times in the line of duty, including getting hit by a piece of shrapnel that remained in his thigh when he was on the campaign trail in 2004.
Despite Kerry’s decorated service, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) was a right-wing political organization that formed in direct opposition to his presidential candidacy. The group financed the book “Unfit for Command” and released a series of ads that attacked Kerry’s service and questioned his military honors, including his three Purple Hearts. Delegates at the 2004 Republican National Convention sunk so low as to mockingly wear adhesive bandages with small purple hearts on their chins, cheeks, and backs of their hands — suggesting that the injuries Kerry received during the war were a joke.
Backed with money from Clarence Thomas’s billionaire buddy Harlan Crow, LaCivita rounded up right-wing veterans willing to trash Kerry’s service, often in direct contradiction to statements made prior to his presidential run. George Elliott, Kerry's former commanding officer, had previously praised Kerry’s combat performance and stated in June 2003 that his Silver Star medal was “well-deserved.” But after Kerry formally announced his candidacy, Elliott — now a member of SBVT — released an affidavit in June 2004 claiming that Kerry “lied about what occurred in Vietnam,” which he later retracted, as well as another affidavit in September 2004 claiming “had I known the facts, I would not have recommended Kerry for the Silver Star.”
SBVT aired a devastating attack ad on August 5, 2004, shortly after the Democratic National Convention. It opened with Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, stating, “If you have any questions about what John Kerry is made of, just spend three minutes with the men who served with him.” Then, 13 veterans accused Kerry of “not being honest” and “lying about his record.” (Watch below.)
Fox News’s Sean Hannity amplified the ad, and other right-wing TV and radio talk shows demonstrated the power of free media by spreading it too. Most of the “swiftboaters” who attacked Kerry hadn’t served with him directly, while those who had supported his version of events (because it was the truth). In a 2018 NPR interview, Kerry observed that while the SBVT “just made things up … left, right and center,” his campaign was unable to match what he called “their alternative facts” (a reference to Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s open endorsement of MAGA disinformation tactics).
The swiftboat attacks soon had Kerry retreating from his greatest strength — his military heroism and overall trustworthiness during an election where the Republican ticket included two men who’d never served in Vietnam and had lied to Americans about the Iraq War. As disgraceful as the strategy was, it succeeded in sowing doubt in the minds of voters.
Why it won’t work this time
With Iraq being a major political liability for Bush, Kerry centered his campaign around his military service. He began his DNC acceptance speech with the line, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” A decorated veteran as the Democratic nominee was intended to challenge the perception that the party was “soft” on defense, particularly during a time of war.
The “swiftboating” smear leveled the foundation of Kerry’s pitch to voters. He’d supported the disastrous Iraq War, so the rationale for his candidacy was that he’d make a superior commander in chief to Bush. But with his service record in question, he was less able to draw the intended contrast. Kerry enjoyed a narrow lead in the polls for most of the summer, but it evaporated shortly after the swift boat smears began and he went on to narrowly lose to Bush in November. (It’s still the last time a Democratic presidential candidate lost the popular vote.)
Walz, however, is not at the top of the ticket, and his appeal extends far beyond his military service. Arizona voters may still describe Sen. Mark Kelly as a “former astronaut,” but Walz is seen as a former high school football coach and longtime congressman. Harris/Walz supporters hold up signs at rallies that state simply “COACH,” and Harris promotes that image by regularly using the term to refer to her running mate. Walz even concludes his stump speech with what feels like a motivational locker room pep talk.
These attacks on Walz’s military record aren’t new, either. When Walz ran for governor in 2018, two retired command sergeant majors in the Minnesota National Guard, Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr, submitted a paid letter to the editor at the West Central Tribune that accused Walz of “conveniently retiring a year before his battalion was deployed to Iraq.” But these allegations don’t hold water for anyone who has bothered to look into the timeline of his service.
The Kerry campaign avoided a direct response to the attacks for far too long, which is rightly considered a mistake. Democrats learned a hard lesson from “swiftboating” — don’t assume that voters will see through the GOP’s transparent lies. So this time around, the Harris campaign and its surrogates moved swiftly to counter the charges.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — also a veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan — called out the attacks as a bad-faith effort from a campaign that isn’t truly concerned with military service but “needs us tied up in debates over pre-retirement conditional rank promotions because they are desperate NOT to discuss their (unpopular) policies, like tax cuts for the rich and banning access to abortion.”
Notably, Bush and his VP Dick Cheney never directly promoted the “swift boat” attacks, so their own spotty records weren’t put in the spotlight. Trump and Vance lack that level of cunning and guile.
Vance said that when the Marine Corps “asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it,” but he’s written in his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” that he was “lucky to escape any real fighting” and that he’d “avoided significant combat.” (Vance was a journalist for internal Marine Corps publications, which has led to some calling him “Sergeant Scribbles.”) When CNN anchor Brianna Keilar described Vance as an “imperfect messenger” for criticizing Walz, Vance had a meltdown on social media. This is a stark difference from Cheney, who insisted he’d never even seen the Swift Boat ads and that the Bush/Cheney campaign had nothing to do with them. He tried to remain above the fray.
Vance has violated an unspoken code that veterans don’t attack each other’s service, especially for obvious political gain. Former Minnesota governor and Navy veteran Jesse Ventura called Vance’s attacks on Walz’s military record “despicable” during a memorable CNN hit. (Watch below.)
Along similar lines, Mark Kelly tweeted, “Hey JDVance, did you forget what the USMC taught you about respect? Tim Walz spent DECADES in uniform. You both deserve to be thanked for your service. Don’t become Donald Trump. He calls veterans suckers and losers and that is beneath those of us who have actually served.”
Trump’s offensive remarks about veterans and POWs are well documented, and criticizing Walz’s military service simply gives Democrats another opportunity to remind voters that he reportedly called American soldiers who died for their country “losers” and “suckers.”
Cotton, Rep. Ronny Jackson, and Donald Trump Jr. are among the Republicans who have accused Walz of “stolen valor.” However, Jackson still uses a rank from which he was demoted, and Cotton has claimed repeatedly and falsely that he was an Army Ranger. They are not in a position to pick nits over Walz’s military career.
“Swiftboating” was especially effective against Kerry because it neutralized one of his strengths. But this attempt at Swiftboating 2.0 reinforces a damning narrative about Vance — that he’s a dishonorable opportunist and liar who cynically attacked a fellow veteran while pledging allegiance to Trump. As Buttigieg put it: “Come to think of it, denigrating the worth of a soldier’s service based on whether he deployed to a war zone is … kind of like denigrating the worth of a woman’s citizenship based on whether she happens to have children.”
That’s the actual story here, not Walz’s military record. Vance has fallen too far to effectively sling mud at anyone without getting further soiled himself.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
Someone needs to tell old man LaCivita that it isn’t 2004 any more. Considering Vance’s running mate is Bone Spurs Donny, you’d think the braintrusts running this dumpster fire would have figured out that the military service angle is a huge “third rail” argument for these dumb weirdos.
That was a powerful rant by Jesse Ventura. He is so right, it is time there was a woman in the White House. A lot of people are going to be voting for her besides Jesse that were flirting with third party candidates. Also, there is a discussion of Peter Thiel backing J.uvenile D.elinquent Vance for VP, because they plan on using Article 25 to get rid of Trump for incompetence when he is in, and letting Juvie take over. Well, the Heritage Foundation seems to have other plans. Rick Dearborn, a former White House Chief of Staff has written the first chapter of P2025 called The White House Office. In it he has basically written what seems to be a job description for himself. The Chief of Staff is all powerful in this narrative. Almost everything is funneled through the COS and he acts as a gatekeeper. In this section one must note that he talks about the president signing bills directly or with the auto signature. When I read that I though about the power that anyone with access to the auto-signature could have. So, they would keep Trump in place, while their hand picked COS runs the country, signing what he wants to quickly with the auto signature. Trump has said that the bills have been drafted for him to sign on the first day, and there is no way he can sign all those bills to overturn our government and thus our country on the first day without help. I assume the auto-signature will be in play. Also, in this first section, Reardon talks about the VP last, and pretends there is a role for him, but one can see it is mainly to serve at the whim of the president, a job in and of itself with Trump. They have the COS well placed to make decisions and carry on without demanding too much of the president other than to be in on discussions and getting a daily briefing, which we have heard from a former staffer turned against Trump is hard enough to manage because he did not listen. On the other hand, we know the VP always is first in line to replace the president. We have to hope that Tim Walz being more appealing than Juvie Vance, will save us from our fate of either one of these paths of leadership around Trump, who is expected to be either teams useful idiot, but may yet surprise them, and us too, but taking over his own dictatorship and shunting them aside. Trump does not want a VP because he wants to rule alone like his heroes Hitler, Putin, Jinping, Jong Un, and the Ayatollah. Let us hope he does not get this chance. I like the stark contrasts being laid out. Prosecutor vs. Criminal / Coach vs. Couch! That is the t-shirt I want to wear. It is interesting to define them by things other than their political jobs, but it comes down to the essence of who they are.