Mark Kelly slams Vance for attacking Walz’s military record

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) went after Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Wednesday for attacking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s (D) military record.

“Hey @JDVance, did you forget what the [United States Marine Corps] taught you about respect? Tim Walz spent DECADES in uniform,” Kelly said in a post on the social platform X.

“You both deserve to be thanked for your service,” Kelly, a retired Navy captain who served in Operation Desert Storm, continued. “Don’t become [former President] Donald Trump. He calls veterans suckers and losers and that is beneath those of us who have actually served.”

The vice presidential nominees for both major parties spent years serving in the military, with Vance doing so in the Marines and Walz in the National Guard.

Vance attacked his opponent Wednesday, charging him with “stolen valor” due to him exiting service prior to deployment to Iraq and stating he served in war when he hasn’t.

“I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?” Vance said. “He has not spent a day in a combat zone. … I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did.”

The Republican vice presidential nominee seemed to be talking about a clip of Walz posted by the Harris campaign on social media. In the clip, Walz is talking about gun control and says, “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.”

Vance has said he hasn’t seen real combat, but he was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a reporter in the Marines public affairs unit.

Kelly was among the leading contenders to become Harris’s running mate, but he was ultimately passed over for Walz. He became an astronaut with NASA after leaving the Navy, and he launched a surveillance balloon venture before being elected to the Senate.

In an emailed statement to The Hill, a spokesperson for Vance said the Minnesota governor “lied about carrying a weapon in a war and abandoned his unit as they prepared to actually deploy for war – he said he would answer the call, but when the call came, he ran for office instead.”

“There’s nothing more insulting to veterans who do answer the call to serve in a combat zone like Senator Vance did than those who engage in stolen valor to benefit their political career – which is exactly what Walz appears to have done,” Luke Schroeder said. “Maybe Mark Kelly would have been a better VP pick after all.”

Updated at 12:46 p.m. EDT