In a powerful round of sitdown interviews with former Fox News anchor and current conservative satellite radio and podcast host Megyn Kelly, former military officers who served in the same unit as their once fellow soldier, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, sounded off on him and skewered him for what they characterized as his inflating his military record.

Those who spoke to Kelly were a collection of Minnesota National Guard veterans, all of whom served with the now-Minnesota governor and Kamala running mate. They accused him, in the powerful interview, of politicizing a rank he didn’t really earn and in ditching his unit at a critical time, when he should have stayed in to lead his men.

The veterans pulled absolutely no punches in their remarks about their former unit mate who retired from the unit shortly before it finally deployed to Iraq. One, for example, pointed to Walz’s exaggerations of his military service, such as his entirely false claim that he carried a rifle in war, saying, “He’s a military impersonator.”

Similarly, another questioned how Walz could retire from the unit and get into politics, relying on his military service when describing his past, as he left his men before they deployed, when they needed leadership that he decided not to provide. That person said, “I don’t understand how he could do it morally. He has absolutely no integrity.”

On much the same note as the others, another guardsman noted that Walz isn’t, in his view, an honorable truthteller but rather is a “habitual liar.” That guardsman claimed that Walz effectively is such a liar that he lies even when telling the truth would make more sense and be easier, saying, “He lies about everything. He lies about stuff that doesn’t even make sense.”

Further, commenting on now-Gov. Walz’s decision to drop out of his unit and run for Congress instead of remaining in service and leading his men when they needed that leadership, one of the interviewed guardsmen said, “The word went all across the state that he had quit. Who the hell does that? Just, unbelievable that a CSM abandoned his troops, 500 soldiers, and a thousand parents out there who expect that person to lead them into combat.”

A different soldier even argued that Walz isn’t in the slightest brave, but rather is a coward who ought to be described as such because of how he retired from his unit in the wake of finding out it might deploy to Iraq and be in combat. That guardsman said, “Walz has made the wrong decision. He’s not brave. I call him a coward because he is.”

And, commenting how Walz up and left when the unit had a mission it needed to do, one that might be dangerous, a guardsman told Kelly, “He basically said, ‘I’ve got better things to do. Go pick somebody else to go on a mission.’” That same veteran added, “If you sold out your Guard unit and abandoned them, what are you going to do at the national level?”

Watch a clip of the interview here:

Featured image credit: Office of Governor Tim Walz & Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan, PDM-owner, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Governor_Tim_Walz_at_Bemidji_Steel.jpg