Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had not even been VP Kamala Harris’s running mate for 12 hours before MSNBC’s All In host Chris Hayes accused Republicans of “swift boating” him on Tuesday. On Wednesday, CNN’s Jim Acosta and Brianna Keilar followed suit by also turning the clock back to 2004 as they defended Walz from GOP criticism.
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On Wednesday, Walz’s GOP counterpart, JD Vance, gave a press conference where he criticized Walz for retiring from the National Guard prior to his unit’s deployment to Iraq. He also took exception to Walz using his military service to justify calls for gun control by referencing weapons “I carried in war” despite having never been to war.
Vance’s comments were carried live on CNN Newsroom, but Acosta still turned to The Atlantic’s senior editor, Ron Brownstein, and recalled, “I mean, these attacks were going to come and they do remind me of when I covered the Kerry campaign back in 2004, the so-called swift boating of John Kerry was a key part of that campaign. Questioning his military service, even though John Kerry was a war hero. It does sound familiar these lines of attack.”
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