In the summer of 2020, when Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called Governor Tim Walz to rescue a besieged precinct in Minneapolis, Walz refused to send National Guard troops to assist the police officers. Walz later justified his decision to allow riots to spread by saying that the Guard was not up to the job.
Mayor Jacob Frey wanted the Governor to send in the National Guard to restore the peace in Minneapolis.
Tim Walz mocked his fellow Guardsmen as “19 year-old cooks.” Which is ridiculous.
My cousin deployed with the National Guard in Minneapolis and he was an Army Ranger. pic.twitter.com/E3D44W9TMx
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) August 8, 2024
I don’t believe the mayor understood what he asked for. What does he mean by the National Guard? I believe the mayor said: “I request the National Guard. This is fantastic.” We will have a massively trained army. You’re not going to find 19-year-olds cooking in some cases.
He continued, “They don’t have zip-ties. They don’t possess legal authority.”
By the time Walz authorized the deployment, of “19-year-old” cooks on Wednesday, the Minneapolis Third Precinct was sacked and the riots had spread.
Walz, a former National Guardsman’s responses and answers sound dishonest. He would have been better off if he had trained in crowd management at some point during his career. You don’t send troops out with automatic weapons unless things go wrong. In my own experience, I deployed in an Operation GARDEN plot exercise to secure a nuclear weapons storage facility from a large force of role players. In those circumstances, there was a strict order to the use of force. You did not load your weapons until you reached the extremes. It is hard to believe that a group that manages civil disturbances, as its primary mission, would not have any rules regarding the use of force.
According to an obscenely servile “fact-check” by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which is supposed to prove Walz did everything he could to prevent the riots on Wednesday, the Minneapolis Mayor asked for troops around 6:30 pm. The police chief then contacted Minnesota Public Security Commissioner John Harrington just after 8 pm, requesting the Guard and giving “mission plan” information. The Guardsmen first arrived around 3:45 am on Friday. What happened?
Walz, who chose to leave his National Guard unit instead of going to Iraq, had his field artillery unit, which was responsible for providing security at convoys, assigned. Some of them were 19-year-olds who were trained for something completely different. Some of the men Walz left behind never returned home. At least one of the men was 19 years old.
Walz’s former unit, which was responsible for the security of US convoys, lost three members during his absence. These included Kyle Miller, who had joined the National Guard when he was still in high school, and David Berry.
Soldiers are only as good as the leaders they follow. If you see a leader not trusting his troops to carry out a mission, then that is a judgment on the leader and not the troops. Walz had refused to send the Guardsmen who completed their mission in Minneapolis on Wednesday. The Guardsmen were not better trained or led. Walz used their inability to do their jobs as an excuse to not do his. Walz is known for his sarcastic remarks.
