President Donald Trump on Sunday defended calling Tim Walz (D-MN) “seriously retarded” and escalated his attacks on the governor’s handling of fraud in state social services programs.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump was asked whether he stood by a Thanksgiving Day post in which he used an offensive term to describe Walz.
“Yeah, I think there’s something wrong with him, absolutely, sure,” Trump responded without hesitation.
When pressed about his choice of language, the president repeated his criticism and connected it to immigration policy.
“Anybody that would do what he did, anybody that would allow those people into a state and pay billions of dollars out to Somalia… there’s something wrong with Walz,” Trump said, referencing Minnesota’s Somali refugee community.
The president’s remarks come as federal prosecutors pursue cases involving more than $1 billion in stolen taxpayer funds across three separate fraud schemes in Minnesota.
Authorities have secured 59 convictions so far in cases tied to pandemic feeding programs, housing assistance and autism therapy services.
The largest case involves the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, where prosecutors say more than $250 million was stolen from a federally-funded child nutrition program.
Federal authorities last week announced charges against the 78th defendant in that investigation.
More than 400 employees of the Minnesota Department of Human Services have issued a statement accusing Walz of bearing full responsibility for the fraud and retaliating against whistleblowers who attempted to report problems.
“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota,” the employees wrote in a statement posted to social media.
They described what they called “a cascade of systemic failures” and alleged that Walz “systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports.”
The whistleblowers claim that agency leaders appointed by Walz ignored rules and laws to suppress fraud reports, and that employees who witnessed fraudulent activity were reassigned or told to remain silent.
The statement named several officials the employees say have escaped accountability.
Walz has pushed back against the allegations, telling NBC’s Meet the Press that Trump’s language was “hurtful” and that the president was “normalizing hateful behavior.”
The governor noted that schools have worked for decades to eliminate such derogatory terms from common use.
When asked about his responsibility for the fraud, Walz told the outlet: “Well, certainly, I take responsibility for putting people in jail.”
He characterized Minnesota as “a generous state, a prosperous state, a well-run state” but acknowledged that prosperity “attracts criminals.”
The governor has previously told the New York Times that his administration “erred on the side of generosity” during the pandemic and has pointed to new fraud prevention measures his office has implemented.
Trump has made Walz a frequent target in recent weeks, calling Minnesota “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” and tying the governor to what he characterizes as failures on immigration and public safety issues in Minneapolis.
The controversy has thrust Minnesota’s handling of social services fraud into the national spotlight, with the state’s whistleblowers now appealing to federal authorities for assistance.
“We can’t fight fraud in Minnesota alone,” they wrote in their statement.
