Yes, he said that, and in the context in which he said it – misinformation driving people to vote based on outright lies, or people dying from COVID due to outright lies, Walz is absolutely right. Free speech absolutism can be deadly to democracy, and just deadly, period.
He says it here at around the 4:00 mark in this MSNBC interview about a year ago:
I’m just waiting for them to say he’s ineligible because he’s a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, not a Dem.
Ah-context does matter.
I’d be interested to hear his ideas on how to objectively decide what is misinformation or hate speech. No human has yet managed to do this.
Absent that, you inevitably end up with the-powers-that-be deciding who should be silenced / prosecuted: the Hitler / Stalin / Mao version of free speech - “Say anything you like, so long as it doesn’t offend the powerful”.
No thanks.
I’d say something that’s deliberately untrue, just as a baseline definition?
In 2019, Trump appointed Walz to the Council of Governors.
You wanted to know whether Walz actually made that statement. I showed you where he made the statement and the full context in which he made it (you’re welcome). Further discussion doesn’t belong in this thread but if you want to spin off another thread I’ll throw in my two cents, but those sorts of threads usually end up being philosophical stalemates.
FWIW here’s one of the multiple past ones.
Maybe revive it? Some good arguments made and they moved me a small bit off my hardline take on the fist amendment.
Is that the 2nd? The right to bare arms? 
Apologies if this has already been shared but I found this article on Vance criticizing Walz on his military record.
I believe it has been (I very nearly posted it myself), but perhaps worth re-posting because I think it highlights this nontroversy as yet another example of a right wing “news” rag playing fast and loose with the truth, and then the lies and insinuation spreading faster than the truth possibly can.
Now we have people insisting there must be something to the accusations, even as there doesn’t seem to be a reliable source that Walz knew his unit was due to deploy when he put in his retirement request, let alone that he chose to retire for the sole or primary purpose of avoiding deployment to Iraq. Or that, even if he did, it was anything but a principled (if quiet) stand against an unjust war.
Rest assured, they’d have found a way to deprecate even Kelly for his military service if he’d gotten the nod.
I agree with Conor Friedersdorf from The Atlantic:
Herr Freidersdorf, and the current SCOTUS, may think it’s awesome to allow Nazis to march through the streets attacking people, but the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact.
“First, they came for the Nazis. Then, everything was cool because there weren’t any more Nazis”.
He took the comment out of context.
Freidersdorf is spreading misinformation. It took me ten seconds to find out that hate speech is illegal in Illinois.
From the Illinois Department of Human Rights homepage:
Yes, IDHR treats racial harassment as discrimination based on race. If a person is subjected to name-calling or negative comments based on a protected class, this may be unlawful discrimination.
But I think this is bordering on a hijack. The question should be “Is this quote going to make one single person who was planning to vote Democratic change their mind?”. I’m saying no.
@Gyrate and I both posted about his hearing loss and its effect on his eligibility to serve, back in posts 118 and 119. Gyrate posted this passage from Minnesota Public Radio:
I then posted this inquiry:
As far as I can tell (it’s a long thread), no-one has responded to that inquiry?
If he was told in 2002 that he could finish his six year term, does that have any impact on the fact that he retired three years later, in 2005? It doesn’t say when he started that six-year term.
Also, with that medical finding on his record, could he have been deployed to Iraq?
I have no military experience, as I’ve said before, so I don’t know the answers to these questions and would appreciate clarification, if that’s at all possible.
I watched a few minutes of Jesse Waters on Fox.
Their talking point today is not only is Walz a coward for bailing out before deploying to Iraq, but he lied to Kamala and claimed that he actually had served in Iraq, and when is he going to tell her the truth? Under the chyron “Stolen Valor”.
Because…the Harris campaign wouldn’t have done the most basic research on candidates before bringing them in for interviews? Whatta tool.
ABC News has published a timeline that says his unit got an “alert order” on July 14, 2005. Is that different from the “warning order” you’re mentioning, Loach?
Here’s the relevant passage from the ABC News article:
Does this help to clarify what Walz knew, and when?
You beat me to it. I was just coming in here to post the same thing. I think your cite directly contradicts the speculation that he retired because he knew he was being deployed.