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Vance throttles CNN anchor for ‘disgusting’ smear: ‘You and your entire network should be ashamed’

August 9, 2024 | | Print Article

CNN’s Brianna Keilar was called out by Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) for seeming to suggest that his military service was not all he claimed.

As the Republican vice presidential nominee hammered his Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over his questionable claims about his military record, Keilar proposed that Vance “may be an imperfect messenger” on the topic, prompting a fiery response from the senator.

“Because we have, as you introduced him, as a combat correspondent, which is what [Vance’s] title was,” Keilar told Dana Bash on Thursday.

“But when you dig a little deeper into that, he was a public affairs specialist, someone who did not see combat, which certainly the title ‘combat correspondent,’ kind of gives you a different impression. So he may be the imperfect messenger on that,” she sounded off.

Vance soon set her straight.

“Brianna this is disgusting, and you and your entire network should be ashamed of yourselves,” he fired back on X. “When I got the call to go to Iraq, I went. Tim Walz said he carried a gun in a war. Did he? No. It was a lie.”

Luis Agostini, a public information officer at the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Chicago office, blasted the CNN host in a long thread on X where he called out how Marine combat correspondents, photographers, and officers have been “diminished” by false reporting.

Walz has come under fire for previous remarks he made that were highlighted in a Harris campaign clip in which he claimed he had carried “weapons of war.”

“We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” he said at the time as he advocated for gun control.

“To most people, that would mean that he was actually in combat, carrying a weapon in a combat zone and getting combat pay and in a dangerous and hostile environment where he is getting shot at,” a member of Walz’s battalion, retired Command Sgt. Maj. Thomas Behrends, told the ‘Ingraham Angle’ on Wednesday.

Walz, tapped as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate this week, has made headlines over his departure from the Army National Guard and sidestepping a deployment to Iraq when he ran for Congress in 2005. The concerns over “stolen valor” have been circulating as Democrats accuse critics of lying about Walz and the timing of his retirement from the Minnesota National Guard.

The governor’s bio on the Harris campaign website was changed from saying Walz was a “retired Command Sergeant Major,” to saying he “served as a command sergeant major.”

“In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired, and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times,” the campaign said in a statement. “Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country – in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.”

Frieda Powers
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