The Minnesota governor’s ‘aw shucks’ demeanor can’t hide the fact that he abandoned his city to riots and walked out on his battalion before it deployed.
The Minnesota governor’s ‘aw shucks’ demeanor can’t hide the fact that he abandoned his city to fire and riots and walked out on his battalion when leadership was most needed.
W hether it’s his military service or his tenure as a “head coach,” there are a lot of questions when it comes to Tim Walz’s record. I suspect more about the governor will be revealed in the coming days.
However, there is one thing Americans should know for certain: Walz is a radical leftist posing as a Midwestern moderate. Don’t be fooled. Whether it’s his soft-on-crime policies or his reckless Covid measures, it’s not hard to see why Bernie Sanders endorsed him for vice president.
Governor Walz transplanted the social-justice policies of California and New York to his home state. Look at how he handled the deadly George Floyd riots of 2020. Walz let the rioters rip Minneapolis to shreds. Like Nero during the Great Fire of Rome, he looked on from the comfort of his governor’s mansion as the city burned.
Instead of immediately jumping to defend Minnesota businesses and citizens who were being brutally attacked by violent mobs, Governor Walz had the National Guard stand down for several days. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he allegedly told Minneapolis police to “give up” the city’s Third Precinct Station as it was engulfed in arsonists’ flames.
Maybe Governor Walz let the anarchy unfold because his wife liked the smell of the burning city — as she explained in a local interview. Maybe Walz simply has a history of giving up when the going gets tough, as he did when he abandoned his National Guard battalion right before it deployed to Iraq. Or maybe he ignored Minnesotans’ cries for protection from the angry mobs because of his radical vision for the state and, ultimately, America.
As Minneapolis lay in ruins after the riots, the governor said: “It is time to rebuild . . . our justice system, and the relationship between law enforcement and those they’re charged to protect.” Democrats never let a crisis go to waste — and Walz saw these riots as an opportunity to score points with the Left and enact a progressive, soft-on-crime agenda.
In the same way that he used the George Floyd riots to transform Minnesota’s justice system, Walz saw Covid-19 as an opportunity to centralize his authority. Immediately after the pandemic was announced in March 2020, the governor declared a peacetime state of emergency, giving himself exceptional powers and effectively turning his recommendations into mandates. What would have otherwise been guidelines now had the force of law. As you might expect, Walz took it upon himself to shut down the economy, deem places of worship “nonessential,” mandate masks, and close schools. Four-hundred thousand Minnesotans lost their jobs as a result of Walz’s measures. Unemployment-application numbers skyrocketed. Drug and alcohol abuse increased. Students were forced to learn virtually at home. (I use the word “learn” loosely. Lord knows what Minnesota students were being taught during Covid.)
Governor Walz’s decision to use emergency powers to halt economic activity, prevent church attendance, and stunt the education of Minnesota’s children lasted for 474 days. And in case any Minnesotans tried to squeeze out from under his iron fist, he set up a snitching hotline for neighbors to report each other’s violations of his Covid restrictions. Governor Walz’s Covid mandates were such brazen attempts at imposing his centralized left-wing vision that state legislators were forced to call for the reform of the governor’s emergency powers.
Despite his “aw shucks” demeanor, Governor Walz does not resemble most people I know from the Midwest. The media want you to overlook his radical record. The media want you to believe that he is an unassuming former high-school assistant football coach from Middle America. “Look, he wears camo and work boots!” — as if that makes him relatable and moderate.
But that’s not who he is. Tim Walz is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist. When it comes to crime, his handling of Covid, and his tenure as governor more generally, he has demonstrated his commitment to transforming the country into a leftist’s dream: tyranny from on high and anarchy for law-abiding citizens.