Angry Tim Walz Claims He’s Furious Over Fraud In His State — But Also That The Scandal Is Just Trump ‘Retribution’

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz claimed Thursday that he is the “angriest” person about his state’s vast fraud scheme, about a minute after he called President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on the fraud “targeted retribution.”

After blasting the president’s administration for taking action following news of the scandal, Walz said he was enraged by the fraudulent activities in the state, which were allegedly primarily carried out by individuals of Somali descent. The governor made his remarks at a Thursday press conference, during which he announced a package of state legislation aimed at combating fraud.

“You can trust me on this. The person who’s angriest about this fraud is me,” stated Walz, the failed 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, while visibly enraged. “There is certainly no political upside to having fraud in your state and it undermines the very program I have spent a lifetime advocating for and trying to implement and we have got criminals.”

“It seems like the Republicans — the only people they’re not concerned about in this is the actual criminals — standing with the criminals,” he added. 

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Walz then immediately shifted the focus to Trump.

“The president has pardoned people who took part in Medicaid fraud, who were responsible for paying back almost $300 million,” the Minnesota Democrat continued. “And because he pardoned them that went away. This is some type of upside-down world where we need the adults in the room.”

Just over a minute before Walz stressed that no one was angrier about the fraud than him, he called Trump’s moves to take aggressive action against it “a targeted retribution against a state that the president doesn’t like.”

The governor specifically called out Operation Metro Surge, the initiative by the president’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to drastically ramp up the federal immigration enforcement presence in Minnesota for the purpose of deporting illegal immigrants. The DHS launched the operation in December 2025, shortly after allegations of welfare and COVID fraud, perpetrated almost entirely by the state’s Somalis, began to make headlines.

“They used false pretense to come in on Metro Surge and we saw the catastrophic damage that was done and the deaths,” Walz said, likely referring to the fatal January shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal immigration personnel.

He then appeared to address the Wednesday announcement by Vice President JD Vance that the Trump administration “decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding” going to Minnesota to make sure the state “takes its obligation seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money.”

“Now we’re seeing them turn to this … they’re gonna freeze the money because of fraud. What specific fraud? What did you see that the state didn’t knew [sic]?” Walz said.

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“They gave you not one single grain of this happened that’s fraud,” the governor continued, raising his voice. “And as we know it doesn’t make it right. This is in every state, and the numbers are bigger in other states because they’re bigger. And they’re doing nothing.”

Walz, in early January, ended his reelection bid for a third term, as reports on Minnesota’s fraud dominated the national news cycle, especially following the release of a viral video by independent journalist Nick Shirley.

“For the last several years, an organized group of criminals have sought to take advantage of our state’s generosity. And even as we make progress in the fight against the fraudsters, we now see an organized group of political actors seeking to take advantage of the crisis,” Walz said in a lengthy Jan. 5 statement announcing his exit from the race.

Several weeks later, Kamala Harris‘ 2024 running mate told MS NOW that he plans to “never run for an elected office again.”