The Democratic governor of Minnesota called it a “badge of honor” to be the target of the president’s criticism.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) pushed back Sunday on President Donald Trump’s claim that Somali refugees are “completely taking over” Minnesota after Trump drew widespread criticism for his attacks on Walz.
Walz said in a Sunday morning interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” that being insulted by Trump was “a badge of honor” after he became the subject of a Thanksgiving eve social media post in which the president cited “the refugee burden” as “the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.”
“As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.”
He added: “The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both,” while also taking swings at progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), criticizing her Muslim faith and speculating falsely that she may have entered the country illegally.
“We have fought three decades to get this out of our school. Kids know better than to use it,” Walz told Welker. “But look, this is what Donald Trump has done. He’s normalized this type of hateful behavior and this type of language. And mainly, look, at first, I think it’s just because he’s not a good human being, but secondly to distract from his incompetency.”
Democratic politicians roundly renounced Trump’s use of the word, widely regarded as a derogatory slur for people with intellectual disabilities, and one Republican lawmaker in Indiana withdrew his support from the GOP’s redistricting plan in the state in response to the post.
The White House has ramped up its crackdown on immigration in the wake of a deadly shooting in Washington that left one National Guard member dead and another critically injured. Trump pledged to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” after law enforcement identified the suspect as an Afghan national who came to the U.S. in 2021 following the Biden administration’s withdrawal from the country.
In a Sunday morning interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Klobuchar accused the president of trying to “stoke division and make people hate each other.”
“Every state has a problem with crime,” Klobuchar said. “But what the president has done here is taken a horrific crime that occurred in Washington, D.C., where one beloved guard member is still struggling for his life, another was shot and killed. … He took that case, and then he went 2,400 miles away to Somalia and somehow indicted an entire group of people.”
Walz, who ran on the Democratic ticket with former Vice President Kamala Harris last year, has repeatedly drawn the ire of the Trump administration, with the Justice Department suing his state and launching a probe into allegations of hiring discrimination.
Federal prosecutors have brought charges against dozens of Somali Americans over the last three years in a wide-ranging corruption investigation into the social services system in Minnesota, which is home to nearly 80,000 members of the Somali diaspora.
The Minnesota Department of Human Service Employees — an account that claims to represent more than 480 employees in the state’s Human Services Department — alleged that the governor “betrayed Minnesota and caused some of the worst inequities Minnesota has ever seen, hurting the most vulnerable and needy” in a Sunday statement.
Walz said any individuals who committed fraud would be punished.
“Those people are going to jail and we are doing everything we can, but to demonize an entire community on the actions of a few, it’s lazy,” Walz said on NBC.