Trump Ignites Minnesota Firestorm: GOP Silent as Rhetoric Escalates

Paul Riverbank, 12/5/2025Trump's incendiary rhetoric and GOP silence stoke tensions, targeting Minnesota's Somali community and leadership.

Gov. Walz stood on his porch the next morning, jacket thrown over his shoulders, his voice more reluctant than angry. “They don’t care who’s on the porch,” he sighed to a handful of reporters, scanning his yard as if searching for how the word had rooted itself there. “That’s what this has become.” He said it quietly, then let the quiet linger before shaking his head. “No Republican leader—none—has come out against this. Not one.” It was the silence, not just the slur, that hurt. Afterwards, trying to change the subject on social media, Walz offered a half-hearted joke—“release the MRI results”—but he couldn’t quite hide it. His staff said folks seemed a bit jumpier than usual, as if some invisible line had been crossed and a new permission slipped into the air.

But the ground in Minnesota had already started to shift before Trump’s latest broadside. Over the last month, two investigative reporters—Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe—pushed out stories about sprawling welfare fraud cases. The “Feeding Our Future” debacle led the nightly news for days: schemes that siphoned off hundreds of millions meant for children’s meals, laundry lists of Somalis and other residents allegedly involved. Seventy names, prosecutors said. And the money? Some, they claimed, funneled overseas in ways hard to trace, rumors swirling it might’ve wound up funding violence far from the Twin Cities.

Naturally, Trump seized the story, linking the fraud to Walz and the state's fast-growing Somali community in one swing. “Let Somalis in, wastes billions,” he griped, jabbing at the governor’s policies. Without missing a beat, he floated axing protections for Somali migrants. Reporters pressed him. He shrugged. “There’s something wrong with the governor.” In the following days, Donald Trump Jr. and Vice President J.D. Vance followed that lead—and neither one spent a word on the abuse now flung in front of Walz’s house.

Minnesota is home to the largest Somali-American community in the nation. The faces you see running shops on Franklin Avenue or scrubs in the hospital—nurses, city councilors, educators—are just part of the state’s story. The welfare fraud was real. Nobody disputes that. But lumping every Somali-American together, blaming a whole neighborhood for a handful of court cases—that, community leaders said, was something else entirely. “It starts with taunts, it turns to violence,” Walz warned, uneasily glancing back at his front door. He said he feared less for himself than for “every Minnesotan caught in the crossfire.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose district hugs Minneapolis, deals in threats more than headlines. Since Trump’s previous barbs—“garbage,” “send them home,” the list goes on—Omar’s received death threats after every spike in venom from the national stage. Not all idle. “It creates fear. And there is a possible danger,” she told a local radio host. Too real.

On the right, some argued the outrage was misplaced, even performative. “Everyone’s furious about a tweet, but where’s the anger at the fraud?” they wrote in op-eds and tweeted under news threads. On the left, progressives circled back: criminal charges are one thing, but don’t use them as cover to dehumanize neighbors. Meanwhile, the rest—folks walking aisles in Cub Foods, greeting friends after Friday prayers—described a creeping tension they struggled to name.

None of this—insults sent, silences kept, tension carried past the nightly news—is new to Minnesota, or America for that matter. Irish, Italians, Hmong, Vietnamese—every generation, a different scapegoat. Words from the top always find their way to the sidewalk. Now, as the winter sun sets early, what lingers for many isn’t just the insult itself, but the vacuum that follows if nobody answers it back.

For Minnesotans, the last days of November had a particular chill—one that drifted far beyond the snow. When former President Trump, well after midnight, fired off a social media jab at Governor Tim Walz, he didn’t just sling another insult; he called Walz “seriously retarded.” The internet, unblinking as ever, caught the burn and relayed it, but things didn’t stay virtual for long. That same phrase, screamed from open car windows, reached up the governor’s driveway. In St. Paul, you could hear the engines idling on Summit Avenue, drivers rolling by, some emboldened anew.Gov. Walz stood on his porch the next morning, jacket thrown over his shoulders, his voice more reluctant than angry. “They don’t care who’s on the porch,” he sighed to a handful of reporters, scanning his yard as if searching for how the word had rooted itself there. “That’s what this has become.” He said it quietly, then let the quiet linger before shaking his head. “No Republican leader—none—has come out against this. Not one.” It was the silence, not just the slur, that hurt. Afterwards, trying to change the subject on social media, Walz offered a half-hearted joke—“release the MRI results”—but he couldn’t quite hide it. His staff said folks seemed a bit jumpier than usual, as if some invisible line had been crossed and a new permission slipped into the air.But the ground in Minnesota had already started to shift before Trump’s latest broadside. Over the last month, two investigative reporters—Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe—pushed out stories about sprawling welfare fraud cases. The “Feeding Our Future” debacle led the nightly news for days: schemes that siphoned off hundreds of millions meant for children’s meals, laundry lists of Somalis and other residents allegedly involved. Seventy names, prosecutors said. And the money? Some, they claimed, funneled overseas in ways hard to trace, rumors swirling it might’ve wound up funding violence far from the Twin Cities.Naturally, Trump seized the story, linking the fraud to Walz and the state's fast-growing Somali community in one swing. “Let Somalis in, wastes billions,” he griped, jabbing at the governor’s policies. Without missing a beat, he floated axing protections for Somali migrants. Reporters pressed him. He shrugged. “There’s something wrong with the governor.” In the following days, Donald Trump Jr. and Vice President J.D. Vance followed that lead—and neither one spent a word on the abuse now flung in front of Walz’s house.Minnesota is home to the largest Somali-American community in the nation. The faces you see running shops on Franklin Avenue or scrubs in the hospital—nurses, city councilors, educators—are just part of the state’s story. The welfare fraud was real. Nobody disputes that. But lumping every Somali-American together, blaming a whole neighborhood for a handful of court cases—that, community leaders said, was something else entirely. “It starts with taunts, it turns to violence,” Walz warned, uneasily glancing back at his front door. He said he feared less for himself than for “every Minnesotan caught in the crossfire.”Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose district hugs Minneapolis, deals in threats more than headlines. Since Trump’s previous barbs—“garbage,” “send them home,” the list goes on—Omar’s received death threats after every spike in venom from the national stage. Not all idle. “It creates fear. And there is a possible danger,” she told a local radio host. Too real.On the right, some argued the outrage was misplaced, even performative. “Everyone’s furious about a tweet, but where’s the anger at the fraud?” they wrote in op-eds and tweeted under news threads. On the left, progressives circled back: criminal charges are one thing, but don’t use them as cover to dehumanize neighbors. Meanwhile, the rest—folks walking aisles in Cub Foods, greeting friends after Friday prayers—described a creeping tension they struggled to name.None of this—insults sent, silences kept, tension carried past the nightly news—is new to Minnesota, or America for that matter. Irish, Italians, Hmong, Vietnamese—every generation, a different scapegoat. Words from the top always find their way to the sidewalk. Now, as the winter sun sets early, what lingers for many isn’t just the insult itself, but the vacuum that follows if nobody answers it back.