Democrat Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz keeps getting caught in lies. First, it was his military rank. He told us he retired as a ‘Command Sergeant Major,’ even though he was stripped of that rank because he never completed the requirements to achieve it. Then he talked about how he carried ‘weapons of war in a war,’ which turned out to be another fabrication -- the closest he got to a combat zone was Italy. Tellingly, when confronted with his fabulism, rather than admit his ‘inaccuracy,’ Walz doubled down, and declared defiantly that he was proud of his military service and refused to allow anyone to impugn it.

Then we learned about his arrest for a DUI, doing 95 mph in a 55 mph zone while running from the police. Although it was clear that ‘Tiny Tim’ was drunk as a lord (he had a blood alcohol level of .128, well above the legal limit of .1), he lied and said that he thought he was being chased by people who wanted to do him harm. (Can anyone say ‘paranoia’?) Yes, the incident occurred before he entered the political arena. When he did, his 2006 Senate campaign rewrote the event to exculpate him. That’s even more disturbing. It speaks to a long-standing pattern of deceit.

Most recently, Walz publicly campaigned for in vitro fertilization (IVF). He claimed it was because that’s how he and his wife were able to have their daughter, Hope, as Gwen Walz was unable to get pregnant in the usual fashion. Come to find out, Walz and his wife didn’t use IVF; they used another, very different method -- intrauterine insemination (IUI). IVF entails injecting sperm into an unfertilized egg in a Petri dish (extra utero); IUI is a method that injects sperm into the woman’s uterus during the time of ovulation.

Discriminating observers must certainly be asking themselves, ‘What’s the next lie/embellishment that Tiny Tim indulged in to pad his résumé and make himself seem more important?

Not only are Walz’s lies and exaggerations part of a disturbing pattern, they’re also eerie. He’s channeling another Democrat who, throughout his decades in politics, made a regular habit of lying, exaggerating, plagiarizing, and rewriting history to embellish and inflate his reputation. His name? Joe Biden.

Biden’s legacy of lying is legendary. Of course, the mainstream media will never address it, but it takes very little research to discover his history of histrionics, exaggeration, and prevarication. Perhaps the most infamous incident is from Ol’ Joe’s abortive Presidential campaign in 1988. He brazenly stole a speech from a Welsh politician, Neil Kinnock, as his own. When the plagiarism was discovered, a humiliated Biden had to drop out of the Presidential race altogether.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. He repeatedly lied about his son, Beau, dying in the Iraq war (tragically, he died of cancer in the United States); he lied about graduating in the top half of his law school class; he lied about his house burning down with his wife inside; he lied about growing up in a Puerto Rican community (he grew up in the Delaware suburbs); he lied about being an experienced driver of an 18-wheeler; and most recently, he repeated the well-debunked lie that when he took office, he inherited an inflation rate of 9% (government statistics document that it was 1.4% when he took office). The lies are legion - and yet, the media cover for him, either softening the truth or burying it completely.

The similarity between Walz and Biden is unsettling. Both have a compulsive need to enhance their images in the eyes of the public which speaks to an underlying personality deficit. Both seem compelled to enhance or inflate their perception in the eyes of the public, which could speak to strong conscious or unconscious feelings of inferiority, insecurity, and low self-esteem.

Certainly, Walz’s capering and cavorting every time he comes onstage is less than statesman-like. The exaggerated waving and hopping and contorted body movement reminds one of a circus clown, not a serious candidate for the second-highest office in the world.

Let's not forget who this man is. Walz let Minneapolis burn for three days amid unchecked rioting before finally calling in the National Guard. By then, it was too late. 1,500 businesses were destroyed; $500 million in damages were done; he abandoned an entire police precinct to vandals and looters. He aligned himself with the criminals who destroyed a once great city that has never recovered from this holocaust. As Vice President, along with extreme leftist Kamala, he could readily bring this devastation to every city in America by sympathizing with looters and criminals and vandals, and hamstringing law enforcement, just as he did in Minnesota.

Walz is the politician who said, “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” The implications of that statement are breathtaking. Walz doesn’t condemn socialism, the most failed, abhorrent economic system in the history of the world; he embraces it as a ‘warm, fuzzy, neighborly’ way of life. Like so many others who are willfully ignorant of history, he sees socialism as a benign, even ‘friendly’ economic system that will make everyone happy. Ask the victims of Stalin’s purges how that worked out. Ask the millions of Chinese in forced labor camps. Ask the slaughtered victims of the Khmer Rouge. Americans should be horrified at Walz’s declaration, and it should set off alarm klaxons in the minds of every rational person in this country.

Today, America stands on the brink. Inflation is crippling everyday citizens; illegal immigrants are flooding the country. Unelected bureaucrats are dictating insane economic and environmental policies and regulations that are killing businesses.

On an international scale, we are witnessing two wars, either of which could escalate into World War III. Europe is in flames as two cultures clash. Islamic extremists have flooded cities and towns and are attempting to impose their religious ideologies on European natives; their aim is to supplant the religious and social freedoms of centuries with the repressive and violent mores of a jihadist culture.

These are serious times, more serious than any time since the height of the Cold War, when Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the podium of the United Nations and declared, “We will bury you!” to the West. Tensions were at an all-time high and the threat of a nuclear war was palpable.

We’ve reached a crisis level again today on both a national and international level. Like then, these times call for strong, intelligent, and determined leadership that commands the respect and, yes, the fear of world leaders who seek to undermine and destroy the United States at home and abroad. Not cackling clowns and bouncing buffoons. Can anyone seriously envision Kamala Harris and Tim Walz standing up to these challenges, facing down America’s enemies with any kind of strength or resolve? The Biden-Harris administration has been an abysmal failure on every front. On the other hand, Donald Trump has an impeccable record of success, economically, socially, and internationally. He has stood up to our enemies and stood up for our allies. He doesn’t suffer fools, and he has made it clear to world leaders that if you try to impose your will on the United States, he will push back, and push back hard.

Given everything we see today, there is no ‘choice’ for America. It’s Donald Trump for the survival of our country and a future of hope for our children.

Eric Dawe is an award-winning writer, chess enthusiast, and the author of two historical novels based on Virgil’s ‘The Aeneid’: Aeneas, Last King of Troy and Aeneas, Landfall of Legend.

Image: Lorie Shaull