Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, whose military service has come under heavy scrutiny, ‘misspoke’ in a 2018 video where he is heard talking about his handling of weapons ‘in war,’ a Harris campaign spokesperson said Friday.

‘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,’ the Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. 

‘In making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the Governor misspoke. 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,’ the spokesperson added.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Harris campaign and the campaign of former President Trump. 

The 2018 video clip shows Walz discussing gun control and referring to his own military background. 

‘We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,’ Walz said in the clip, which was posted by Harris’ campaign on Tuesday.

Republicans, led by vice presidential candidate JD Vance, have criticized Walz’s military service. Walz served 24 years in the National Guard but never deployed to a war zone. In 2003, he deployed with his unit to Vicenza, Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the name for the war in Afghanistan. 

He retired in 2005, several months before the unit deployed to Iraq. 

Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, has accused Walz of ‘stolen valor.’

‘I wonder Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?’ Vance said at an event in Michigan. ‘What was this weapon you carried into war? What bothers me about Tim Walz is this stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not.’

‘I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did,’ he added. 

The Biden administration is sending another round of military assistance to Ukraine as its war with Russia intensifies following a large-scale incursion by Ukrainian forces. 

The latest package is worth $125 million and includes air defense interceptors, munitions for rocket systems and artillery, multi-mission radars, and anti-tank weapons, the State Department said Friday. 

The U.S. has funneled billions in assistance to Ukraine to help the country counter Russian attacks. The aid came following the deaths of at least 14 people in a mall in Kostiantynivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, by a Russian airstrike. 

‘The end goal here is to help Ukraine defend itself,’ White House national security council communications adviser John Kirby told reporters. 

Some Republicans have objected to the Biden administration’s spending on military and economic aid for Ukraine, amid numerous domestic pressures. The U.S. national debt currently stands at just over $35 trillion.

On Friday, Russia’s Lipetsk region, which sits just north of Kursk, came under attack by Ukrainian drone strikes in which an ammunition depot and warehouse were reportedly hit. Some 700 Russian guided bombs were allegedly destroyed in the strike, East2West media sources told Fox News Digital. 

Pro-Kremlin military bloggers released a video online showing the remnants of a Russian convoy that was apparently ambushed by Ukrainian forces on Thursday night. 

The graphic footage showed burned-out vehicles, including some that were filled with bodies of dead Russian soldiers. 

Meanwhile, Russia declared a federal-level emergency in the Kursk region, four days after hundreds of Ukrainian troops poured across the border in what appeared to be Kyiv’s biggest attack on Russian soil since the war began.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said reinforcements were on their way to Kursk to counter Ukraine’s raid, with Russia deploying multiple rocket launchers, towed artillery guns, tanks transported on trailers and heavy tracked vehicles.

Fox News Digital’s Caitlin McFall and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris are neck-and-neck in key swing states, according to a poll released Wednesday.

A survey conducted by Ipsos found the Republican presidential nominee and his Democratic opponent are in a dead heat struggle for seven swing states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.

Harris receives 42% of the vote share in the seven swing states, compared to Trump’s 40% and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy’s 5%.

Ipsos said in their report that the ‘margin on the ballot is well within the margin of error, indicating a race that is too close to call.’

Approximately 52% of respondents in the swing states said that inflation is the most important issue facing the country, while 32% said immigration is the most pressing matter.

The Ipsos poll was conducted between Jul. 31 and Aug. 7 — the Harris campaign announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Aug. 6.

Pollsters have not had enough time to effectively survey the impact of Walz’s selection on Harris’s chances.

The campaign has made it a point to highlight Walz’s Midwestern roots and everyman persona, introducing him as ‘Coach Walz’ during rallies in a nod to his time as a teacher and high school football coach.

Harris will lean on Walz in the critical Midwestern swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin, where the Minnesota governor can point to his regional ties.

The Ipsos poll utilized a representative probability sample of 2,045. 

Respondents consisted of U.S. adults 18 or older living in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Ipsos reports a margin of sampling error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.

MINNEAPOLIS – ‘Squad’ member Ilhan Omar’s GOP challenger is warning Americans being newly introduced to Gov. Tim Walz that she believes his policies as governor are just as progressive as those of the controversial Minnesota congresswoman. 

He’s behind her 100%,’ GOP congressional candidate Dalia Al-Aqidi told Fox News Digital about Walz’s ties to her opponent, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.

‘Look at the Squad, the first people, the first politicians who supported his nomination were the far-left, with the progressives posting on social media the photos of Walz,’ Al-Aqidi said. ‘Our attorney general, Keith Ellison. They were celebrating this, thinking that this is good for our country. No, we don’t want socialism in our country. It failed in its origins. It’s not going to help here.’

Al-Aqidi, whose family fled the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq before she made her way to the United States working as a journalist across the globe, took issue with the media narrative that Walz is a ‘middle of the road’ or ‘moderate’ politician.

‘Saying Walz is moderate is just like saying Ilhan Omar is pro-Israel,’ Al-Aqidi said. ‘If you believe that, then you would believe that. Of course, Walz wasn’t chosen because of his high profile. It’s that they match. I mean, his policies. If we look at what happened in our district in Minneapolis, or at least for the past three years, it’s because of Governor Walz’s policies. It was on his watch when the whole world watched our city being burned, and he didn’t do anything.’

‘He didn’t support our law enforcement. He didn’t support us. Look at the violence rates and the crime rates and we are suffering,’ Al-Aqidi continued. ‘I invite everybody, everybody who supports Walz, I invite them to come and see Minneapolis and see how sad our downtown is, let alone the scandals, let alone the corruption. He’s far from a moderate.’

Al-Aqidi made the case that because VP Harris promoted a fundraiser to bail BLM rioters out of jail and Walz waited several days to call in the National Guard, the two of them together on a presidential ticket is ‘going to turn into’ Minnesota’s 5th District.

 ‘If they are in charge, she supported bailing the criminals who were detained after the riots and after the burning and destruction . . . so I think that this is the first time in American history that we have two very far-left progressives on the ticket. This is very dangerous.’

Omar and Walz have repeatedly praised each other over the years, and Omar was quick to celebrate Walz’s nomination as vice president on social media with a photo alongside the governor.

‘Our North Star state Governor has signed universal school meals, paid family and sick leave, marijuana legalization, and protections for reproductive rights into law,’ Omar posted on X. ‘Bringing Minnesota nice to the ticket’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign and Omar’s office for comment but did not receive a response.

Minnesota will hold their primaries on August 13th where Al-Aqidi is running unopposed, and Omar is expected to defeat her three Democratic challengers.

Former President Trump said President Biden had ‘the right to run’ for re-election and the Democratic Party ‘took it away’ from him, while blasting his new opponent Kamala Harris as the ‘least admired, least respected, and worst vice president in the history of our country.’ 

Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday afternoon after holding off-the-record meetings with major media outlets. The Trump campaign said the Republican presidential nominee wanted to address the media ‘while they were already in Palm Beach because he’s the most transparent candidate in history.’ 

Trump said Thursday that the U.S. is in ‘the most dangerous period of time I’ve ever seen for our country.’ 

‘We have somebody that hasn’t received one vote for president, and she’s running, and that’s fine with me, but we were given Joe Biden, and now we’re given somebody else,’ Trump said. ‘I think, frankly, I’d rather be running against somebody else, but that was their choice.’ 

Trump said Harris is ‘a radical left person at a level that nobody’s seen,’ and said her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is a ‘radical left man that has positions that are not even possible to believe they exist.’ 

‘He’s heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds having to do with safety. He doesn’t want to have borders, he doesn’t want to have walls. He doesn’t want to have any form of safety for our country,’ Trump said. ‘He doesn’t mind people coming in from prisons and neither does she — I guess because she couldn’t care less.’ 

Harris formally became the nominee after Biden suspended his re-election campaign and endorsed her amid pressure from within the Democratic Party. The Democratic National Committee formally nominated Harris as their nominee this week. 

‘The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden, and I’m no Biden fan,’ Trump said. ‘From a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away, and people are saying he lost after the debate and he couldn’t win.’ 

‘Whether he could win or he couldn’t, when he had the right to run, and they took it away, and they said they would use the 25th Amendment,’ Trump continued. 

Trump said the pressure from within the Democrat Party and ‘what they’ve done’ is ‘pretty incredible.’ 

‘Now I’m running against somebody else, and we’re leading. We’re leading — so I’m not complaining,’ he said. ‘I’m saying, for a country with a Constitution that we cherish — we cherish this Constitution — to have done it this way is pretty severe, pretty horrible.’ 

Trump said he thought Democrats ‘would have gone out to a vote’ or ‘would have had a primary system.’ 

‘But just to take it away from him like he was a child?’ Trump said, adding that Biden is ‘a very angry man right now.’ 

‘I can tell you that he’s not happy with Obama, and he’s not happy with Nancy Pelosi,’ Trump said. ‘He’s not happy with any of the people that told him ‘you’ve got to leave.’ He’s very unhappy, very angry.’ 

Trump said he thinks Biden ‘also blames’ Harris. 

‘He’s trying to put up a good face, but it is a very bad thing in terms of a country when you do that,’ Trump said. ‘I’m not a fan of his, as you probably have noticed, and he had a rough debate, but that doesn’t mean that you just take it away like that.’ 

He added: ‘You go out to a vote, you do something — he had 14 million votes. She had no votes.’ 

‘And she’s crashing,’ Trump said. 

‘We have a vice president who is the least admired, least respected, and the worst vice president in the history of our country. The most unpopular vice president,’ he said of Harris. 

Trump also slammed Harris for not engaging with the media. Harris has been the de facto Democratic nominee for 18 days, and she has not held a formal press conference or sat for a wide-ranging interview. 

‘She’s not doing any news conference. You know why she’s not doing it? Because she can’t do a news conference. She doesn’t know how to do a news conference,’ Trump said. ‘She’s not smart enough to do a news conference.’ 

Trump said he is ‘very happy to run against’ Harris, and said he ‘hates to be defending’ Biden, but pointed to the Constitution again. 

‘We have a Constitution. It’s a very important document, and we live by it. She has no votes, and I’m very happy to run against her. I’m not complaining from that standpoint. And I hate to be defending him, but he did not want to leave. He wanted to see if he could win,’ Trump said. ‘They said, ‘You’re not going to win.’ After the debate, they said, ‘You’re not going to win. You can’t win. You’re out.” 

Trump said Democrats, after successfully pressuring Biden to drop out of the race, ‘just picked a person.’ 

Trump, pointing to Harris’ failed 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign, said she was ‘the first out.’ 

‘She was the first loser. Okay. So we call her the first loser. She was the first loser when, during the primary system, during the Democrat primary system, she was the first one to quit, and she quit. She had no votes, no support, and she was a bad debater, by the way, a very bad debater,’ Trump said. ‘And that’s not the thing I’m looking forward to. But she was a bad debater. She obviously did a bad job. She never made it to Iowa then, for some reason.’ 

Trump said he thinks Biden ‘regrets’ tapping Harris as vice president. 

‘He picked her and she turned on him, too. She was working with the people that wanted him out,’ he said. ‘But the fact that you can get no votes, lose in the primary system. In other words, you had 14 or 15 people. She was the first one out, and that you can then be picked to run for president.’ 

Trump added: ‘It seems, seems to me actually unconstitutional. Perhaps it’s not.’