Times and WaPo Jump On Board Trump Camp Swift Boating of Walz
Times and WaPo Jump On Board Trump Camp Swift Boating of Walz
The Post’s and the Times‘ pieces on Tim Walz service record are...
For the younger folks: Kerry got some seriously badass medals for his military service in Vietnam. People who had been on the same boat as he did, but at a different time, worked with the Republican party to claim that he hadn't really done what he did. The press ate this up, and distributed it widely, costing him public support and likely the election.
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I don't remember much of the Kerry campaign, but didn't he lean into his service record? The stolen valor argument is much weaker seeing as Walz has never claimed he's seen active combat.
Regardless, it's incredibly disappointing to see reputable news outlets bat for Trump just because the Dems have two ever so slightly left-leaning people on the ticket.
They are clutching at straws. Every step the Democrats have taken since Biden decided to withdraw from the race has tripped the Republicans out. They had no game plan for that contingency, and they are still several steps behind and frantically playing catch up. They are falling back on their old negative handbook tactics. Hopefully they don't work. Because that Swiftboat Vets thing against John Kerry was really stupid. The only thing that was more stupid back then was that so many idiot voters believed it.
ETA: Some of these newspapers / media outlets are really freaked out, but only about Walz. They were fine when it was just Harris because she's very moderate. Her choice of Walz (which was a smart choice because it reinvigorated liberal voters towards her) is the thing that they are stressing out over, because of the (tax) implication.
There's a documentary about it because the Swift Boating was such bullshit.
Several of the swift boaters themselves recanted after the Questionable Victory of GeeDubz part II.
And please not, this is literally the same person trying to swift boat here - Chris LaCivita, now the co-manager of the Trump campaign.
Grifters all the way down the trump camp
Can't find the documentary, here's a relevant article:
On Friday, the group, who served with Mr. Kerry in Vietnam, sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challenge he issued last November: that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single charge the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made against Mr. Kerry.
. . . Mr. Pickens did not reply.
So Mr. Kerry’s veteran allies took up the cause. In a 12-page letter — with a 42-page attachment of military records to support their case — they rebut not one but several of the accusations of the Swift boat group.
The veterans offer to go through Mr. Kerry’s record and the video with Mr. Pickens “page by page, frame by frame.” And they demand an apology, to them “and to the American people.”
Of course, none of this is new. Extensive news media accounts undermined the Swift boat charges in 2004, pointing out that some of the Swift boat critics had written statements in Vietnam lauding Mr. Kerry for extraordinary bravery in the incidents they later said he made up. One critic had himself received a medal for heroism during a hail of gunfire he later claimed Mr. Kerry had concocted to win his third Purple Heart.
But that did not blunt the political impact.
Ah yes. Texas scumbag T. Boone Pickens, the Musk of his day, funded the whole smear campaign.
And it's a reminder that republiQans do not give one good goddamn how true something is or not. If it has "political impact" they'll use it.
The Republicans have never given a single shit about veterans, they just like the flag waving and faux patriotism. They nominated the guy who consistently insults veterans, calling those who fell in war "losers", and the rest of their elected officials consistently starve the VA so that veterans can't receive the care they were promised.
Like everything else the Republicans claim to "support", it's in name only, and no substance. They only support their billionaire overlords, and the orange fuhrer himself.
I got a real Boone T' Pickens with that guy
Have you been drinking tonight, sir?
Step out of the thread, please sir.
It's equally weak because it's all bullshit. The problem is that the press isn't willing to assess truth on this kind of thing, and then center that.
Remember Kerry was miligned by much of the veteran community because he protested against the war in Vietnam. The swiftboat claims helped to fit into a narrative that his service record was flawed, especially against GWB's controversial record with losing flight status with the Air National Guard.
Snorting coke and going AWOL from the TANG was way more respectable to these idiots.