OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s ex-boyfriend, former daytime TV talk host Montel Williams, broke down on the CNN set during a panel discussion about the current divisive state of American politics.
Williams, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who served for 22 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander, along with the rest of the panel, was discussing remarks that Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance, himself a Marine Corps combat veteran, made about Harris running mate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
The governor spent 24 years in the U.S. Army but is now embroiled in a controversy for previously claiming he had served in combat when he hadn’t and for opting to retire from the service right before his unit was set to deploy to Iraq. In addition, Walz has said he retired as a sergeant major, though the Minnesota National Guard has since said that he had enrolled in the Army’s Sergeant Major Academy but did not finish the course and instead retired at the next lower rank of Master Sergeant.
Vance went after Walz’s military record for a “stolen valor” claim.
On CNN, Williams told host Sara Sidner and the panel’s conservative, Scott Jennings, that Walz has a “right to say what he said” about his military service before going on to praise Harris and voice concerns about a new civil war breaking out in the country.
“It‘s her tenor. The tenor is, ‘Let‘s unite, not divide.’ It‘s time to have more conversations, even like the ones we‘re having right here, though I disagree with what you‘ve said, we‘ve disagreed. We‘ve also kind of just slightly realized that we could turn that beach ball just a little bit and see a different panel, see a different point of view.”
“See a point of commonality,” Sidner interjected.
“She is really focused on trying to make America understand that what unites us is far greater than what divides us as a mass. And we ought to pay attention,” Williams continued. “Those people on the fringes who are taking away the wrong message, those people who have some form of mental illness, we‘re taking away a long message saying that, ‘If my side doesn‘t win, then burn the whole thing down.’ We can‘t do this.
“We‘ve got to remember, you know, folks like me, and we‘ve probably got 40 million veterans alive, the majority of them put their hand up in the air and said, ‘I do solemnly swear and affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,’ period. That‘s what we believe in,” he added as he began to tear up.
“That‘s why I put on the uniform, to protect this for your generation, your generation. Let‘s start focusing on how we protect this and stop firing up those idiots who really think that they can — because, at the end of the day, what do you want? You want to eat out of the garbage can? Because that‘s what‘s going to happen. If we go to a civil war, remember, more deaths in the American Civil War than any other conflict since,” he said.
“Brother against brother,” Sidner said.
“We gonna do it again? Sorry,” Williams said, apologizing.
“Don’t be sorry. This is a serious — this is a really, really serious moment in our history.”
WATCH:
During a press conference this week, Vance said of Walz, “What really bothers me about Tim Walz isn’t even the positions he’s taken, though certainly he has been a far-left radical. What really bothers me about Tim Walz, as a Marine who served his country in uniform, is when the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably and I’m very proud of that service.”
“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—a fact he’s been criticized for aggressively by many of the people he served with,” he added.
