Democrat vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz is the "master of shading the truth," including about his military service, Rep. Jack Bergman said on Newsmax on Thursday.
"If you've all seen the movie 'The Wizard of Oz' and you know the old saying, where at the end it says pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?" the Michigan Republican, a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant general, said on "Wake Up America." "Well, Walz is the man behind the curtain, and he's been blustering his way through the political world for a very long time."
Walz has come under fire from critics who say he embellished his military record with the Minnesota National Guard, which disputed his gubernatorial biography complaints that he retired as a command sergeant major. Further, Walz retired from his unit shortly before it was to be deployed overseas.
"I would suggest to you, because I served in both active Marine Corps Reserve Marine Corps and Rhode Island Army Guard, over my period of time in service over 40 years, there were some folks that were just great folks, but they had no interest in doing other anything other than wearing the uniform for awhile," said Bergman.
Some used the military as a "stepping stone to something" and were not "necessarily bad people, but they weren't honest people," he added.
"When you get into the situation where you're running to become the vice president of the United States, number two in command, you better have your act together and it better be truthful," said Bergman. "Don't embellish what you did or didn't do just to serve your personal end, and I think Walz right now, as we look at his record, shows that he didn't do what he said he did."
He added that Walz, at this point, should "just beg forgiveness" while moving forward.
"But he's lied, so it makes me feel kind of like going back to John Kerry," said Bergman. "[He and I are not that far apart in age, [or] the Swift Boat veterans that called him out for his embellishment of his Vietnam service."
That means it's "time that the American people know that what they've got here is Tim Walz, the imposter," said Bergman. "Tim just needs to say, 'Hey, I lied, I made it up. And now will you still have me as your vice president?' I think maybe the answer will be no, because you can't lie at that level."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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