PHOENIX: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice president, “misspoke” in a 2018 video about “weapons of war that I carried in war,” a Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson said Saturday.
Republicans, including the vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, began questioning Walz’s military record after Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, named the governor as her running mate on Tuesday.
Some of the criticism centers on comments by Walz in a 2018 video circulated on social media by the Harris campaign in which he speaks out against gun violence and says, “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.” The comment suggests that Walz portrayed himself as someone who spent time in a combat zone.
Walz served 24 years in various Army National Guard units but he was never in a combat zone.
Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign, said Saturday in a statement that Walz misspoke in the 2018 video.
“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,” Hitt said.
“In making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the Governor misspoke,” Hitt added. “He did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them, unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance who prioritize the gun lobby over our children.”
Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating high school, serving four years as a combat correspondent, similar to a military journalist, and deploying to Iraq in that capacity in 2005.
Walz ‘misspoke’ in 2018 reference to ‘weapons of war, that I carried in war,’ Harris campaign says
https://arab.news/vgg32
Walz ‘misspoke’ in 2018 reference to ‘weapons of war, that I carried in war,’ Harris campaign says
- Walz served 24 years in various Army National Guard units but he was never in a combat zone
- Republicans began questioning Walz’s military record after Vice President Kamala Harris picked him as her running mate
Only 4% women on ballot as Bangladesh prepares for post-Hasina vote
- Women PMs have ruled Bangladesh for over half of its independent history
- For 2026 vote, only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates
DHAKA: As Bangladesh prepares for the first election since the ouster of its long-serving ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, only 4 percent of the registered candidates are women, as more than half of the political parties did not field female candidates.
The vote on Feb. 12 will bring in new leadership after an 18-month rule of the caretaker administration that took control following the student-led uprising that ended 15 years in power of Hasina’s Awami League party.
Nearly 128 million Bangladeshis will head to the polls, but while more than 62 million of them are women, the percentage of female candidates in the race is incomparably lower, despite last year’s consensus reached by political parties to have at least 5 percent women on their lists.
According to the Election Commission, among 1,981 candidates only 81 are women, in a country that in its 54 years of independence had for 32 years been led by women prime ministers — Hasina and her late rival Khaleda Zia.
According to Dr. Rasheda Rawnak Khan from the Department of Anthropology at Dhaka University, women’s political participation was neither reflected by the rule of Hasina nor Zia.
“Bangladesh has had women rulers, not women’s rule,” Khan told Arab News. “The structure of party politics in Bangladesh is deeply patriarchal.”
Only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates for the 2026 vote. Percentage-wise, the Bangladesh Socialist Party was leading with nine women, or 34 percent of its candidates.
The election’s main contender, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose former leader Zia in 1991 became the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation — after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto — was the party that last year put forward the 5 percent quota for women.
For the upcoming vote, however, it ended up nominating only 10 women, or 3.5 percent of its 288 candidates.
The second-largest party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has not nominated a single woman.
The 4 percent participation is lower than in the previous election in 2024, when it was slightly above 5 percent, but there was no decreasing trend. In 2019, the rate was 5.9 percent, and 4 percent in 2014.
“We have not seen any independent women’s political movement or institutional activities earlier, from where women could now participate in the election independently,” Khan said.
“Real political participation is different and difficult as well in this patriarchal society, where we need to establish internal party democracy, protection from political violence, ensure direct election, and cultural shifts around female leadership.”
While the 2024 student-led uprising featured a prominent presence of women activists, Election Commission data shows that this has not translated into their political participation, with very few women contesting the upcoming polls.
“In the student movement, women were recruited because they were useful, presentable for rallies and protests both on campus and in the field of political legitimacy. Women were kept at the forefront for exhibiting some sort of ‘inclusive’ images to the media and the people,” Khan said.
“To become a candidate in the general election, one needs to have a powerful mentor, money, muscle power, control over party people, activists, and locals. Within the male-dominated networks, it’s very difficult for women to get all these things.”
