Election News

Pete Buttigieg slams JD Vance’s “stolen valor” claims about Tim Walz

He brought up the "childless cat lady" mess.
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U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg makes a stop in Grand Rapids while campaigning for Hillary Scholten ahead of the Nov. 8th election Friday, Nov. 4, 2022, at the headquarters for the Kent County Democrats. (Via OlyDrop)
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg makes a stop in Grand Rapids while campaigning for Hillary Scholten ahead of the Nov. 8th election Friday, Nov. 4, 2022, at the headquarters for the Kent County Democrats. Photo: Cody Scanlan/Holland Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via IMAGN

Out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hit back at vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) for taunting vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz (D) for not seeing combat during his 24 years of military service.

All three—Vance, Walz, and Buttigieg—served in the U.S. military. Walz served 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard but never deployed to a war zone. Vance was in the Marines for four years and spent six months in Iraq in 2005 as a military journalist, but he saw no combat.

Related:

Jennifer Aniston blasts J.D. Vance’s misogynist “childless cat ladies” comments

The actress also alluded to the Republican VP candidate’s recent opposition to the “Right to IVF Act.”

“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?” Vance said while speaking to reporters in Michigan yesterday, referring to remarks Walz made in a Harris campaign video on gun control where he said that “those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.”

“What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq and he has not spent a day in a combat zone?” Vance continued. “What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage.”

“Stolen valor” is when someone falsely represents themselves as having served in the military or having gotten an honor or a medal. Walz never did either of those things, and Buttigieg responded to Vance’s insistence that Walz’s military service doesn’t mean as much as his because he “has not spent a day in a combat zone.”

“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,” Buttigieg posted to X.

Buttigieg was referring to comments Vance has made about how “childless cat ladies” should not have political power in the U.S. Vance specifically named Vice President Kamala Harris (who has two stepchildren), Buttigieg (who has adopted two children since Vance made those comments), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as examples of “miserable” cat ladies who shouldn’t be in office because they don’t have biological children.

On X, many of Buttigieg’s followers agreed with his comments.

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