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Many local stories that could be harmful to Democrat politicians don’t become national TV stories for an obvious reason. In the case of the massive welfare fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota under Democrat Gov. Tim Walz, former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 running mate, that is doubly obvious.
The focus launched with conservatives on Nov. 19 with a City Journal article by Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe with a rather unforgettable sentence: “The largest funder of [al Qaeda-linked] al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.” Fraudulent social-service payments were sent to Somalia, and ended up in a dangerous place.
The New York Times arrived late to the story on Nov. 30. The online headline was “How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch.” The front page in the paper was notably softer: “The Social Services Corruption That Preyed on Minnesota Nice.” A better term would have been “preyed on Minnesota Woke.”
On “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker began with the obvious method of broadcast-network introduction of a story — taking exception to something President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social. He tagged Walz with the R-word, or as Welker put it, “a slur widely regarded as derogatory towards people with intellectual disabilities.” Walz then unloaded two minutes of denouncing Trump for “meanness.”
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For her second question, Welker arrived at the billion dollars of fraud, and, showing she’d read the New York Times, cited that amount is “more than Minnesota spends each year to run its Department of Corrections, so I want to give you a chance to respond to this. Do you take responsibility for failing to stop this fraud in your state?”
Walz dodged: “Well, certainly, I take responsibility for putting people in jail.” That’s fake news. Walz has put no one in jail. Federal agents and the United States attorney for the District of Minnesota investigated, exposed and prosecuted the fraudsters. Then her questions worsened again, as Welker asked Walz to explain how Trump’s suffering a major cognitive decline.
On Dec. 1, the New York Post reported that almost 500 state employees tweeted, “Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response.” The broadcast networks passed on it.
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On Dec. 2, “NBC Nightly News” broke the silence in one sentence of a White House roundup by reporter Gabe Gutierrez: “Federal prosecutors have charged dozens of people in Minnesota’s Somali community for allegedly stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money meant for social service programs.”
ABC, CBS and PBS just shamelessly ran Trump’s angry response that night without any context of massive fraud: “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work…. They complain and do nothing but bitch.”
The same context-free pattern on Trump’s “presidential tirade” continued on Wednesday morning shows on ABC and NBC, while “CBS Mornings” included a small mention by reporter Nancy Cordes, that Trump’s “been talking about Somalis ever since the story broke last week about a fraud ring in Minnesota, which has the nation’s highest concentration of Somali Americans.”
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On Wednesday night, White House reporter Mary Bruce finally produced a snippet of context: “The New York Times reports 59 people have been convicted in schemes involving more than $1 billion in stolen taxpayer money that was supposed to go to children and other social services. President Trump seizing on this story as he widens his immigration crackdown.”
Trump “seized” on the scandal, while ABC whiffed. Bruce then let the Democrats respond. “But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey defending the Somali community.” Frey said “He’s wrong and we want them here.” Wait. He’s wrong about the billion dollars in fraud?
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On “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker began with the obvious method of broadcast-network introduction of a story — taking exception to something President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social.
One reason Trump might have been called Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar “garbage” is her connections to the fraudsters in the Somali community. The New York Post reported on Thursday that Omar and her staffers defended the fraudulent charity called “Feeding Our Future.” Guhaad Hashi Said, who worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaign as an “enforcer” who oversaw Somali voter mobilization, pleaded guilty in August to running a fake food site called Advance Youth Athletic Development, where he falsely claimed to serve 5,000 meals a day and pocketed $3.2 million out of the food program.
The worst broadcast interview on the topic this week happened with Omar on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” Co-host Michel Martin did the spoon-feeding of Omar: “I just wondered what went through your mind when he said things like they contribute nothing and should go back to where they came from and so on.” Omar replied: “His vile rant really wasn’t a surprise to me. He has trafficked in racism, in xenophobia, in bigotry and Islamophobia for as long as he has held office.”
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On the fourth question, Martin finally laid out that fraud occurred, and then just asked “do you have any reaction to that information?” Omar said she was happy there was accountability. Martin followed up with another puffball: “Are you concerned that an entire community is being scapegoated because of the actions of this group of people?”
Never allow leftist broadcast media operatives to step onto a soap box and say they’re all about “holding government accountable.” Scandals like this underline that every scandal somehow ends up as a Trump scandal. He said something uncouth about a Somali-organized fraud. Omar isn’t described as unleashing a “tirade” when she calls Trump a racist bigot and an Islamophobe. They agree with it, so it’s just righteous speech.
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