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Did America’s Got Talent Get Totally Scammed By An Injured Vet Wannabee?
In a day when non-Native American politicians who want votes and people seeking casino licenses they don’t deserve claiming Native American heritage is as popular as non-military veterans claiming to be veterans, or military veterans claiming a service record or injuries that never actually occurred, another case of misleading military madness has hit and hit big. This time the top-rated America’s Got Talent TV show and its judges may have been the victims.
During one of this week’s AGT programs a self-proclaimed injured veteran named Timothy Michael Poe stepped out on the stage with a stutter and a story that has come into question. Claiming that he served fourteen years in the military, Poe told the judges that his stutter was the result of a broken back and brain injury received while serving in Afghanistan. He claimed that those injuries occurred during an attack on his unit after “I had volunteered for a team to go out and clear buildings and help out with the wounded.”
Timothy claimed that a rocket propelled grenade came flying in his direction and that it exploded before he could take proper cover or jump on his fellow soldiers to protect them from the blast. Poe says that all he had time to do was to yell “Grenade" before he collapsed from his injuries. After the story brought tears to everyone’s eyes, the singer played his guitar and sung without stuttering. The performer claims that a physical rehabilitation expert of some type told him to try singing in the shower to deal with his stutter and that’s how he came to develop his newly discovered talent.
The story was sad, the singer sang well, but after his performance Poe didn’t stutter while speaking to AGT host Nick Cannon. That may or may not have sent up a red flag to someone in the audience, that I cannot say. All I know is that within a day of Poe’s AGT performance another version of the story about Poe’s service record was presented to the news media by Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Olson. He is a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard and begs to differ with the facts presented on AGT by Poe. Olson told the Associated Press news organization, “Sergeant Poe’s official military records do not indicate that he was injured by a grenade in combat while serving in Afghanistan in 2009, as he reports.”
Olson also says that Poe never received a purple heart (Poe never claimed he did on AGT) and claims that the singer only spent one month serving in Afghanistan in 2009. There are other problems with Poe’s account of his military record. Olson told the AP that the singer served with the Minnesota National Guard from December of 2002 until May of 2011. That time period falls quite a bit short of the fourteen years of service that Poe claims, unless he also served in the regular army or some other branch of military service at some point that we haven’t been told about.
It’s ironic that Sergeant Poe would appear before the likes of Howard Stern with a phoney story when Stern is so well known for saying much the same kind of things during his radio career. Stern sometimes claimed military service in an admittedly tongue-and-cheek manner and would occasionally tell his listeners that he used products he was promoting only to later admit he lied to get a few laughs and lots of attention. It would be ironic if the Jokster now has become an unwitting part of the joke. I guess that the NBC big wigs didn’t get the memo about checking out AGT participants before they take the stage with sad stories.
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