With ‘Swift Boat’ architect at the helm, Trump campaign uses familiar playbook against Walz

(CNN) — The Trump campaign’s attacks on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s military record are channeling the “swift boating” campaign 20 years ago against John Kerry, which accused the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee of lying about his Vietnam service and decorations.

The common denominator in both efforts: Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita.

LaCivita played a key role in the political advocacy group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which ran the TV ad campaign questioning Kerry’s military service. It’s a playbook that the Trump campaign appears to be re-running after Vice President Kamala Harris tapped Walz, a 24-year veteran of the Army National Guard, as her running mate.

Neither Harris nor Donald Trump ever served in the military. But Trump’s running mate – Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who is a Marine veteran – quickly zeroed-in on Walz’s military service, accusing him this week of abandoning his unit before it deployed to Iraq in 2006 and of falsely claiming he served in a war zone.

“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him,” Vance said at a campaign stop Wednesday.

Walz filed to run for Congress in February 2005 – before his unit was notified it could deploy to Iraq. He deployed with the Minnesota National Guard in August 2003 to Vicenza, Italy, as part of support for the US war in Afghanistan, according to a Minnesota Guard spokesperson, but not to a war zone.

The hits on Walz’s military service align with Trump’s penchant for personal attacks against his political opponents, while also harkening back to the effort to sully Kerry’s military record two decades ago.

LaCivita even connected the two in an interview with RealClearPolitics on Wednesday. “Birds of a feather,” he said of Walz and Kerry, “will be tarred together.”

There are key differences. For one, Walz is the vice-presidential nominee and not at the top of the ticket, meaning the attempts to undermine his service may not go as far with voters as the attacks on Kerry, which leaned on his activities protesting the Vietnam war after he came home. Military service also played a much more central role in the 2004 campaign when President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was a key campaign issue.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth – a reference to the type of boat Kerry served on while in Vietnam – launched a series of ads in the summer of 2004, when Kerry was leading Bush in the polls. The ads featured Vietnam veterans accusing Kerry, who served as a Naval officer, of lying to win combat decorations, including the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

While the ads were “riddled with inconsistencies,” according to a New York Times report that summer, they went directly after what was perceived as a strength for Kerry and had an impact – launching the term “swiftboating” into the US political lexicon.

Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History wrote that the swift boat ads “ushered in a period of decline” for Kerry’s campaign, with his summer polling lead evaporating. Bush went on to defeat Kerry that November.

“Most damaging of all, Kerry’s Vietnam service had become controversial, rather than reassuring, and it was largely dropped from the remainder of his campaign,” the university center wrote.

The ads stretched the boundaries of acceptable campaign tactics – at least for the time – and the group, classified then as a “527,” was allowed to collect unlimited contributions so long as it didn’t coordinate with the Bush campaign. The organization was later renamed to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth.

LaCivita was described as the group’s “chief strategist” in a 2014 profile, and he told the Times in 2004 that he advised the group on media strategy, saying his role included providing advice and placing advertisements.

In addition to his 2004 work with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, LaCivita has worked for a host of GOP campaigns, the Senate GOP political arm, the Republican National Committee and pro-Trump super PACs before he joined Trump’s 2024 campaign. He’s a Marine combat veteran who was injured during the first Gulf War in the 1990s.

CNN has reached out to LaCivita for comment.

In the 2024 presidential campaign, the allegations related to military service aren’t coming from an outside group but from the campaign directly – and one of its principals.

Vance, who is a Marine Corps veteran, has led the charge questioning Walz’s military service. It’s one of several lines of attack the campaign has trotted out to try to blunt Walz’s perceived strengths with the critical Midwestern voters the Harris campaign is hoping he can reach.

Vance served four years as an enlisted combat correspondent, in public affairs, and deployed once to Iraq for roughly six months, according to his military record. He’s accused Walz of “stolen valor” for language he used in a 2018 speech advocating for an assault weapons ban, which the Harris campaign has included in a video on social media. Walz at the time said he wanted to “make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.” Walz never deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq or a combat zone as part of his service.

Asked about Vance’s attacks, a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement: “In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country – in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.”

Walz faced similar criticisms about portrayal of his overseas service when he first ran for Congress in 2006, as well as during his 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial campaigns.

“I’m proud of the 24 years I served our country in the Army National Guard. There’s a code of honor among those who’ve served, and normally this type of partisan political attack comes only from one who’s never worn a uniform,” Walz wrote in 2006 in response to a letter to the editor in a local newspaper.

In a Thursday news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump touched on Walz but did not amplify his running mate’s attacks, instead criticizing the Minnesota governor on transgender issues and the border.

But Trump has posted about the matter on social media, sharing a video from Fox News’ Sean Hannity with the caption: “QUESTIONS SWIRL AROUND WALZ’S SERVICE RECORD.”

The-CNN-Wire
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