Dem governor’s tale of combat action torn to shreds by commanding Army officer: 'Give me a break'

Retired Lt Col James Gottschling says that Gov Wes Moore is exaggerating his combat experience in Afghanistan

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, widely believed to be considering a presidential run in 2028, is facing renewed scrutiny over his resume — this time from his former Army supervisor who is questioning the governor's claim that he led soldiers in combat.

In an investigative deep dive into Moore's military service, The Baltimore Sun spoke with a retired Army Lt. Col. James A. "Jamie" Gottschling, who served with Moore in Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006. What Gottschling described was Moore's patriotic service and dutiful fulfillment of his role, but exaggerations — and in some cases falsehoods — about incidents that occurred overseas.

Moore's team said that "partisan politics got in the way" and led to Gottschling's latest assessment, where he told Fox News Digital: "I wouldn't call him a soldier."

Fox News Digital spoke with Gottschling on Monday.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore speaks onstage during the 2025 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture presented by Coca-Cola - Day 3 at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on July 6, 2025, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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He said in the interview that while Moore would occasionally leave the base, the governor never saw combat. Gottschling said he would describe Moore and himself as "combat veterans" who are "not veterans of combat."

"When you think of a veteran of combat, you think somebody that's in a foxhole, getting shot at, IED blowing up the convoy, or even more dramatically, when you think about World War II movies, Easy Company, or any of those things where it's like, those guys are getting shot," Gottschling said. "That just wasn't the environment that he was in."

"He starts talking about, you know, in his TED Talk and really struggling with reintegration into the civilian world after the deployment, I'm like, 'what is he talking about?' You know, he spent six months over there, basically in, you know, a forward base that pretty much is as safe as anywhere. You'd probably be at more risk going to an ER in any of the cities in the United States than you would be in Afghanistan, in Salerno."

Sgt. Matthew Taylor from Orlando, Florida, 1st Lt. Wes Brockbank from Seattle, Washington, and CPL Matthew Moebes from Decatur, Alabama with the U.S. Army's 4th Squadron 2nd Cavalry Regiment walk through a village during a joint patrol with Afghan National Army soldiers near Kandahar, Afghanistan, on March 2, 2014. 

Moore is widely considered a contender for the 2028 Democratic Party nominee for president.

"I just think it's disingenuous to really associate with the struggle. I mean you can have some empathy for people that might struggle with the transition, but when you come over there pretty much dip into a combat zone situation, work on the staff for six months and then come out you know saying that, you know, all this trauma that you had ... and it's like, oh, give me a break," Gottschling told Fox News Digital.

"So I think it's just him emotionalizing and capitalizing on what soldiers do. And he's not a soldier," he continued.

"He was in the Army as a reservist in a staff position in Iraq, but I wouldn't call him a soldier."

The Baltimore Sun report describes Gottschling, who then held the rank of major, as the "Army officer who supervised Moore daily" in Afghanistan. Moore has framed himself as a paratrooper in the famed 82nd Airborne Division who led troops into battle during his deployment overseas.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore speaks during a press conference at the Maryland State House on August 5, 2025, in Annapolis, Maryland. 

Moore worked on information operations coordination while the pair were stationed together at Forward Operating Base Salerno in the Khost Province near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. According to The Baltimore Sun, Moore's job was "analyzing reports from infantry battalions and provincial reconstruction teams, coordinating for civilian assistance and helping Afghan officials communicate with the public."

Central to Moore's personal narrative is that he led troops into combat in Afghanistan. He said that on multiple occasions on X while he was campaigning for Maryland's governorship.

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"I’ve seen real patriotism when I led paratroopers in combat in Afghanistan and I’ve seen it in my own family," he said in a Nov. 6, 2022 post, just two days before he was elected governor.

"Service has defined my life, starting when I joined the Army when I was 17, through leading soldiers in combat with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan, to today," he said in a post earlier that year.

In his book, "The Work," Moore describes being shot at.

"As a soldier, you never forget the first time you were shot at," he wrote in the book. "A sudden, stunning commotion engulfs you—the sound of shells buzzing past your ears, a flurry of divots leaping out of the earth around your feet—but then your training kicks in," the book says.

"Moments before those first shots came at me, I was convinced I was prepared for the experience," the book continues.

Video

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Moore, who is widely considered a contender for the Democratic nominee for president in 2028, reaffirmed that that passage from his book was true during a July interview with CNN, again claiming that he "led soldiers in combat."

Gottschling also contests the extent to which Moore led other soldiers. In "The Work," Moore described fellow soldiers as "my paratroopers" and rejects Moore's framing that he was ever "leading" troops in combat.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Moore's senior press secretary described Gottschling's motives as political.

"Five days after Marylanders re-elected Governor Moore in a historic landslide, Sinclair is back to swiftboating a veteran by recycling the exact same stories and interviews they already ran months ago," Ammar Moussa said. "Twenty years ago, before partisan politics got in the way, Lt. Col. Jamie Gottschling signed an official Army evaluation declaring Wes Moore a ‘top 1% officer’ and ‘the best lieutenant I've encountered during Operation Enduring Freedom.'"

U.S. service members walk off a helicopter on the runway at Camp Bost in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on Sept. 11, 2017. About 300 Marines are deployed in Helmand Province in a train, advise and assist role supporting local Afghan security forces. 

Gottschling addressed that evaluation with The Baltimore Sun.

"There’s a lot of embellishment with that, but that’s just how the system was," he told the outlet. "You’re not trying to be deceitful about it, but you want to elevate what they did (your soldiers) … so they can get their next job or next promotion."

"Now, a longtime Donald Trump donor who has openly stated his goal is to stop Governor Moore from being in contention for the presidency is working with Sinclair to contradict his own signed military records," Moussa continued. "Governor Moore’s service in Afghanistan—including earning the Combat Action Badge and coming under rocket fire alongside fellow service members—has been independently verified by official Army records and The Baltimore Banner, which interviewed fellow service members, and no partisan swiftboat campaign will change the facts." 

The Combat Action Badge is also addressed in The Baltimore Sun's story. The story describes it as a "minor indirect rocket attack" where nobody was injured.

Chelsea Clinton and Gov. Wes Moore speak onstage during the Clinton Global Initiative 2026 Annual Meeting at New York Hilton Midtown on Sept. 22, 2026, in New York City.

Moussa, citing a report in the Baltimore Banner, said a Marine named Anthony Del Signore who was attached to Moore's unit said that their convoy "took some shots" at least once. 

A New York Times exposé found in 2024 that Moore for years claimed to be the recipient of a Bronze Star when he had not been awarded one at the time. He included the Bronze Star claim on his resumé when applying for a White House fellowship in 2006. In 2024, he received the award after then-Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., urged the Army to give him one.

In a story published in July on the topic of Moore's military service, Gottschling said he doesn't want Moore to be president. At that time, Moore was running for reelection as governor.

"I care about my faith and country. I do not really care whether Moore is elected governor of Maryland, but I do care if he is in contention for the presidency," he said. "I could not live with myself if I was not vocal about the truth."

Gottschling made it clear that he wasn't putting down Moore's service, which he called exemplary, but took issue with what Moore said about his service after he came home and elevated his political profile.

Gottschling called Moore a "valued staff officer" and said he "appreciated every minute" of the work he did.

"I think there's nothing wrong with that, if it ended there, that would be it," Gottschling said. "But it didn't end there. The embellishment, the aggrandizing of his actions over there that didn't take place is the problem that I have. I'm a pursuer of the truth, you know, and I want to tell the truth."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-governors-tale-combat-action-torn-shreds-commanding-army-officer-give-me-break

Jennifer Welch Begs For Money After Sponsors Sever Ties with Podcast Over Vile Charlie Kirk Remarks

Jennifer Welch is now begging for money after she laughed about someone digging up Charlie Kirk and defiling his corpse.

Leftist darling Jennifer Welch and co-host Angie Sullivan laughed uncontrollably for 30 seconds at the thought of someone digging up Charlie Kirk and shooting him again.

Angie Sullivan and Jennifer Welch then spread the lie that Charlie Kirk was shot by someone who was “super MAGA.”

Charlie Kirk, a husband and father to two young children, was murdered by a leftist in September 2025, and Jennifer Welch wants someone to defile Kirk’s corpse.

This is the demonic left.

Wicked leftists laugh at Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

On Friday, Cash App said that they are no longer sponsors of Welch’s podcast.

Cash App is a mobile app that allows users to send and receive money instantly.

“We do not condone violence of any kind, and we are no longer sponsors of this podcast,” Cash App said.

Other sponsors like Chewy, Honeylove, Zenni and Casper dropped the “I’ve Had It” podcast after Jennifer Welch’s vile comments about Charlie Kirk.

After melting down for 30 minutes over companies dropping their sponsorships, Jennifer Welch asked viewers for money.

“If you want to sponsor us financially, you can become a member on YouTube,” Jennifer Welch said, adding, “Also go buy my book….”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/11/jennifer-welch-begs-money-after-sponsors/

Europe's Plot To End Americans' Online Anonymity

This article is thanks to The Court Jester!

European regulators and NGOs are pushing their domestic speech laws and surveillance onto the American internet. But there's a way to fight back.

The war against anonymity is raging in Europe. 

"The witch hunters work like a mob, and if enough of them phone the police, the police are going to come," says Bernie Spofforth, a political activist who was detained by U.K. police for a social media post.

It's coming to the United States, thanks in part to lobbying by "a massive network of NGOs" connected to the U.K. government, says Brian Chau, founder of a new AI-driven investigative journalism outlet called Effort.news. The technique, says Chau, is to smuggle in speech codes and effectively end online anonymity under the guise of "child safety."   

Their success could doom free speech on the internet. The good news is there's a way to fight back.

The U.K.'s War on 'Misinformation'

In England, you can go to jail for posting an angry opinion on the internet. 

"They turned up with three police cars, a police van, four, five policemen. I don't even know how many were there," Spofforth says, recounting the night of August 8, 2024. "And they came into my house and arrested me."

Her alleged crime? Posting misinformation.

After the murder of three children at a dance studio in the town of Southport, rumors swirled that a Muslim asylum seeker was the killer. Spofforth says she copied and pasted the rumor on X and added: "If this is true, then all hell is about to break loose."

It wasn't true, but all hell broke loose anyway.

"I saw that this post had become very popular. It had a lot of reposts," Spofforth says. "Now, if something gets a lot of reposts and you haven't done the investigative work yourself, then the chances are it's either a really brilliant post or a really bad one. And I just deleted it."

Politicians and the local police chief blamed misleading posts like Spofforth's for whipping up the riots that rocked Southport.

"The people to blame for the disorder are those conspiracy theorists who were putting out disinformation, completely incorrect information online," the police chief said.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer blamed social media in a press conference following the Southport riots for inflaming the situation. He warned "social media companies and those who run them" that "violent disorder, clearly whipped up online" is a crime "happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere." 

Spofforth says it wasn't mere social media posts that whipped up the riot. 

"I think it is the murder of three little girls in a Taylor Swift dance class and the brutal stabbing of 10 others. That was what caused the problem," she says. "The deflection for the government is, 'Well, this wouldn't have happened if we clamped down on disinformation and misinformation. And these people need to be shut up.'"

Spofforth admits that it was a mistake to post a false name and speculate about a triple-child murder. But being arrested and held for 36 hours, which is what Spofforth says happened to her, illustrates the difference between a country with First Amendment protections and one lacking them.

"In the U.K., you don't need to break the law to be arrested," she says. "So if someone says that they feel they have been harmed by what you've said, then you can be arrested. If someone says that what you've said is deeply offensive, they're very distressed by it, you can be arrested. It's insane."

In the U.K., these kinds of arrests are common. Police detained comedian Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence for three posts on X saying that he felt "hate" for "misogynists and homophobes," that he could "smell" a picture of a trans activist gathering, and that "if a trans-identified male is in a female-only space,… make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."

Dimitrie Stoica was sentenced to three months in jail for violating the 2023 Online Safety Act after faking himself running from rioters on a livestream. Lucy Connolly served a year for incitement after she reacted to the Southport stabbings by calling for mass deportations and saying that people could "set fire" to the hotels where migrants were lodging "for all I care."

"I'd say, conservatively, there are probably 50,000 arrests per year in the U.K. for speech and conduct…that would be unambiguously and very clearly protected in the United States," says Preston Byrne, an American free speech attorney. "What the Online Safety Act does is it moves that domestic regime online, because it says anything that would be illegal in the real world is also illegal online."

4Chan Pwns Britain

Byrne fought Britain's online speech regulator, Ofcom, short for Office of Communications, in court, representing 4chan, the notorious online message board where anything goes. 

4chan received a notice in April 2025 from Ofcom informing the site's owners that they needed to certify compliance with the U.K.'s Online Safety Act by ensuring British citizens can't access "harmful" material. Otherwise, they'd face up to 18 million pounds ($24.1 million) in fines.

"This is an important case because it was the first time, really, that a foreign regulator had attempted to enforce a censorship fine on an American company," Byrne says. "Foreign governments, the U.S. government, they don't, generally speaking, try to go and take down popular speech. So the fight will always happen with the unpopular speech, because the unpopular speech is what people try to use power to suppress."

At one point, Byrne replied to Ofcom's repeated threats with a picture of a hamster and a promise that any future correspondence would be "shredded and used to line his enclosure upon receipt." When Ofcom persisted, he replied with AI-generated images of larger and larger hamsters.

"They're laughing at us, aren't they?" one British commentator asked the U.K.'s technology secretary, who replied, "Yeah, and therefore we need to take further action." 

"It occurred to me…these guys aren't taking this seriously. They're not taking America seriously. They're not taking our Constitution seriously. So I'm not going to take them seriously," says Byrne. "It seems frivolous, sending a picture of a hamster to a foreign regulator, but ultimately it's part of a communication strategy, which is designed to get the attention of people who matter in Washington, D.C., and make sure that they understand exactly what's going on."

Congress is paying attention. Versions of Byrne's model legislation, Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion Act, or the GRANITE Act, have been introduced in both House and Senate committees.

"What the U.K. is trying to do is they're asserting that if content or a web server can be seen and viewed in their countries, that web server must obey the law of those countries," Byrne says. "So we have a conflict. The United States First Amendment says an American on American soil using American infrastructure has the full protection of the First Amendment. The U.K. is saying an American running American infrastructure on American soil must obey British law. And if they win this fight, then the First Amendment will effectively cease to exist online."

Europe's Scheme To Regulate the American Internet

The U.K. government's attempts to control Americans' online speech don't end there.

"From the get-go, the European slogan was that 'We are going to be the regulatory leader,'" says Brian Chau. "In other words, 'We are going to have the regulation that compels companies in other countries.' That was their overt goal, and actually they're succeeding."

Chau is the creator of an AI-based news-gathering organization called Effort.news, which uncovered a U.K.-based lobbying effort to bring online age-verification laws to America.

"State laws are this incredibly, famously messy thing to track, because every state house has slightly different configurations on how you get their information," he says. "I built a pipeline to get those state laws, to get other records like [Foreign Agents Registration Act] filings, for example. And I basically asked it, 'Well, what's the best evidence on foreign interference with tech laws in the U.S.?' And it found the story autonomously, based on that data."

Chau's team assembled the data into an article, which he says was written by humans and not AI, detailing tech lobbying by nonprofits like 5Rights, founded by Baroness Beeban Tania Kidron, a member of the British House of Lords. Or there's Reset Tech, which Effort points out is part of a five-member consortium, led by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, that received 4.9 million pounds ($6.6 million) from the European Commission. By Effort's count, the ISD has taken in over $17 million in grants and contracts from the E.U., U.K. agencies, and the U.S. government, including the State Department.

5Rights and Reset Tech did not reply to Reason's interview requests. The ISD replied by email to say, "We in no way seek to curtail free expression" and instead seek to expose "industrial scale manipulation by hostile state actors like Russia, Iran and China…to prevent radicalisation…and stop supporters of nihilistic violence from carrying out school shootings."

"I think the way that's best to think about it is that this is an international network that was both funded by the U.S. government under [Joe] Biden and previously under [Barack] Obama, as well as funded by international governments," Chau says. 

But why would foreign-linked nonprofits focus their efforts on age-verification laws meant to keep American children off social media? Chau says it's because these organizations realize that in order to control online speech, you must first abolish online anonymity.

"If you're anonymous, then they can't arrest you," he says. "So that's a long-time technological safeguard against these types of laws." But he believes that age-gating large websites will eventually lead to a de facto "digital ID" for most of the internet. "They will collect the ID of every single person who visits the sites that they regulate….In other words, it's not restricted to minors at all. In practice, this is a digital ID requirement for everyone."

These nonprofits may be pushing age-verification laws now, but in the past they spent the bulk of their resources trying to police misinformation and so-called hate speech on the internet. One group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, spearheaded a corporate boycott of Twitter after Elon Musk's takeover.

"There's plenty of evidence already with many of these NGOs that they're not particularly interested in the child safety aspect," Chau says. "They're interested in controlling speech on the internet and will use whatever narrative justifies that policy."

Byrne believes that the European NGOs' and regulators' "fever dream is that the internet is extremely tightly controlled.…Everybody is identified.…There's no anonymous speech. There is no ability for ideas which are not acceptable to the political mainstream to get traction and propagate."

Former U.K. Prime Minister Starmer announced a nationwide digital ID scheme called BritCard in 2025.

"You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It's as simple as that," Starmer said.

It wasn't so simple. Political backlash caused Starmer's Labour Party to back off the proposal.

"In the U.K., every time they've asked about digital ID, we've always said, 'We're all right. Thanks a lot. We'd rather not have you know everything about us,'" Spofforth says. "[But] quietly, behind the scenes, every single government department in the U.K. has created its data point, right? It's ready to go.…You might like that. You may think that's really convenient. And it might be convenient, but what happens if you don't agree with your government?"

England's digital ID plan stalled, but the Online Safety Act requires that any website Ofcom designates as potentially "harmful" to children implement "highly effective age assurance," such as photo ID or facial estimation. The E.U. is moving in a similar direction under the Digital Services Act.

But there's a small problem for the regulators: VPNs, virtual private networks that let users mask their physical location.

Proton VPN became the No. 1 free download on the U.K.'s Apple Store within days of age verification going into effect, and the company reported a 1,400 percent increase in sign-ups.

"They're so technologically stupid, they think they can ban VPNs. Of course they can't," Spofforth says. "But they'll find other ways around verifying your online name, face, age, and IP address. And once they have that, it doesn't matter if you are an anonymous account on X. They know who you are and they can stop you doing what you're doing. And I think that is absolutely terrifying."

But Byrne thinks the U.K. will be powerless to shut down discourse within its borders unless it implements totalitarian governance.

"Unless the control is total, generally speaking, these safety regimes are counterproductive," Byrne says. "And then once you have that total regime, congratulations, you're North Korea."

Chau thinks that could be exactly where governance is headed in Europe. He cites a historical study of regime stability that found that "coherent democracies and harshly authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes are the most conflict-prone." 

"Governments which are stable tend to be at either end of the spectrum from autocracy to democracy," says Chau. "Either people think that they really can't do anything at all, or people think they are fully in control. And when you go around the middle, when people think, 'Oh, there's some chance that we can be in control,' but there are also people who are trying to clamp down on that, that's when something is unstable. And we're seeing the E.U. rapidly rush from one end of the spectrum to the other, where more and more information control is being imposed…to suppress the democratic process itself."

Liberty's Technological Edge

The good news is that even one-party states like China have failed to eliminate privacy tools like VPNs.

Chau believes the technological edge is looking increasingly favorable to free speech.

"The most dangerous phase has already gone past us," he says. "There were genuinely really severe and really significant concerns about concentration of power during the social media era. It was being used to censor political opinion, but that was not intrinsic to the technology itself. What was intrinsic to the technology itself was that now you knew about it."

He thinks AI will cause our would-be digital gatekeepers to further lose their grip. Chau's AI-driven journalism is one example of that. No government can stop him from running a local instance of an AI that's trained to bring forth inconvenient information that makes a regime look bad.

"The long-run ability for these illegitimate regimes to maintain political control has never been weaker," Chau says. "I just think there are all of these reasons to be optimistic. I think the people who are black-pilling…are confusing the unprecedented level of knowledge they have with what they perceive to be an unprecedented level of bad things happening."

But for those of us who want the free and open internet to survive, we need that technological optimism to be paired with real political action.

"Just because they legislate a ridiculous law, it doesn't mean that we have to play along with their delusions," Byrne says. "We asserted our constitutional rights and showed just how ridiculous that law is."

Byrne has written that, ultimately, "the UK is not going to listen to reason until America forces it to."

"Politically, there's too much at stake for them," Byrne says. "Essentially, this piece of legislation is owned by the British political establishment….They can't back down. They can't admit that they overreached. What they can do is they can turn around and say, 'Well, oops, you know, we bumped into a power greater than ourselves, the United States.' 

"It's not humiliating to lose to the United States," he says. "It is rather humiliating to lose to 4chan. That moment will only come after the United States asserts its sovereign authority. To say, 'Listen, you're not allowed to touch our businesses, our companies, and our citizens.'"

America's strong free speech protections set us apart from the rest of the world, and we need strong legal, political, and technological defenses so that never changes.

https://reason.com/video/2026/11/05/europes-plot-to-end-americans-online-anonymity/