It is fair-minded in pointing out that while Minnesota has done a poor job of preventing fraud, it doesn’t justify the racist comments Trump has made. He’ll probably declare it fake news
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Minnesota finds itself in a harsh spotlight as President Donald Trump revs up his attacks on Gov. Tim Walz, an old political foe, while simultaneously expanding his demonization of Somali Minnesotans.
After unleashing torrents of foul language against Walz last weekend, and then this week referring to Somali Americans, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, as “garbage,” Trump reportedly dispatched additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Minnesota. Their orders are yet uncertain, but Trump suggests they will patrol a specific class of people, Somali Americans. In other words, strict racial profiling will now extend to our neighbors.
To read some online discourse, including that spewed by Trump in a feverish late-night troll session of more than 160 posts, Minnesota is a den of fraud perpetrated solely by immigrant hordes. This rhetoric is divisive, racist and wrong.
Minnesota is home to the nation’s largest Somali community. These residents are our colleagues, friends, law enforcement officers, public servants, neighbors and taxpayers. That Trump would demonize an entire diaspora — the vast majority of whom live here as legal citizens or permanent residents — is beyond reprehensible. It’s dangerous.
As Trump amped up his verbal and online assault of Somalis last week in the wake of the slaying and critical wounding of two National Guard members by an Afghan immigrant in Washington, according to charges, the president was asked what Somalis had to do with the deadly encounter. Trump’s response was revealing and toxically xenophobic.
“Ah, nothing. But Somalis have caused a lot of trouble,” he said.
Which brings us to the crux of the issue that the president has opportunistically seized on: the amount of fraud that occurred in Minnesota during and after the pandemic. It’s an issue that won’t go away until it’s fully addressed.
Here is the truth, however: Our elected leaders and government officials can prevent and prosecute fraud without villainizing law-abiding Minnesotans or relying upon racist stereotypes.
Yes, Minnesota demonstrated a serious problem with oversight of state dollars during the COVID-19 crisis and the resulting economic calamity. In a well-meaning effort to help people, Walz and his administration fell short.
In the case of Feeding Our Future, the state trusted that nonprofits and other third parties would honor their responsibilities. This enabled the theft of public resources meant to feed the hungry. While most of the perpetrators were Somali, the alleged mastermind was a white woman, Aimee Bock. This crime wasn’t a product of race or ethnicity, but opportunity and criminal greed.
But that’s not the only fraud. In an October commentary in the Minnesota Star Tribune, former Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles detailed the lack of safeguards that enabled fraud in other programs, many of which have led to indictments and prosecution.
Thanks to prosecutors under Democratic and Republican administrations, criminals have faced vigorous prosecution. This is not enough. The public deserves assurances that systemic reform will prevent this from happening again.
Absent this, the state will be unable to credibly launch needed programs to address the growing economic strain on Minnesotans as the cost of living increases and the rate of unemployment is again on the rise.
That said, no specific instances of fraud should ever be used to castigate an entire class of Minnesotans. Minnesotans with German American backgrounds were persecuted as traitors during World War I. Italian Americans were stereotyped as dirty criminals during the 1920s. Hmong immigrants in the 1970s faced distrust and harassment over mistaken assumptions and racial profiling.
Waves of nativist fear have met every immigrant group, and when individuals within those groups committed crimes, they were pinned unfairly on everyone. The answer now is the same as before: Fix the system and police the crime while embracing the individual potential of every Minnesotan to enhance our shared society.
Meantime, any lectures on fraud should come from leaders who want to prevent it, not those who cast slurs and demonize the poor, hapless and innocent. Minnesotans will render their judgment at the polls next year. If our choices are between mushy inaction and spiteful rhetoric, we all lose.
Judging from the responses I’ve seen around this state, people are outraged at Trump’s blatant racism. If he’s planning on running for a third term (unconstitutionally!), he probably shouldn’t count on winning in Minnesota.
Does anyone think the elections under the Trump dictatorship will be free and fair in future?
That if they weren’t rigged last time (projection-confession and all that) they willbe fronm now on?
Haven’t people been paying attention?
Judging from Trump’s obvious and rapid decline, I have serious doubts about whether or not he’s going to make it to June of next year, much less November of 2028.
There are two more-subtle problems underlying the entire… well, it’s not a dialog, because nobody is actually communicating; same for conversation…
The assumption that all fraud can be prevented and/or prosecuted, whether through bigotry or any other means. The entire point of a scheme to defraud is that “deception can get something of value without qualifying for it/paying the full price for it.” For example, virtually every real-property empire is built upon deceiving the original holders of the property about the value of that property so that they either sell low or fail to vigorously and effectively object to the “acquisition” — and that can include governments as the original holders. Wait a minute, doesn’t that describe…
The assumption that antifraud measures themselves don’t harm anyone — and, especially, don’t harm “deserving” persons, who are otherwise entitled to something but for whom that particular something is a matter of necessity and not mere luxury. Anyone who has ever encountered the VA knows how that looks; go ahead, try to understand either “service-connected disability” or the appointment-availability system. Social Security disability processing is even worse…
“While most of the perpetrators were Somali…”
Were they really? If Minnesota is anything like other states, I’m going to guess that the biggest perpetrators of pandemic relief fraud were large business owners, mostly run by republicans. That’s certainly the case here in Oregon. Individuals and families, even collective hordes of them, are simply unable to approach the scale of fraud engaged in by one or two large companies.
@Artor #4: Exactly. Why waste energy on small time fraud when the real problem is systemic plunder from people like Trump, Musk, Bezos and the other billionaires? It’s just misdirection.
@Erland Meyer #5: “It’s just misdirection.”
You’ve got to give the devil his due. The Manchurian Cantaloupe is a master of misdirection. I’ve long suspected that his whackadoo antics were just a way to dominate the news cycle, while the real crimes and “Project 2025” bullshit went unnoticed. e.g., annexing Greenland, or making Canada the 51st state.
But that was months ago. He’s deteriorated so much that his true stripes are showing, underneath the (literal, I think) madness. I only hope his enablers realize he’s spiraling out of even their control and 25th-Amendment his ass out of the Oval before…before…I can’t think of anything plausible that’s too horrific for his puppeteers to stomach. Maybe Putin resorting to nukes, somewhere?
Sure, but replacing him with another republican (or democrat) stooge won’t fix anything.
#7 – having someone less mercurial would be good….unfortunately it would probably also be advantageous for the forces of darkness….not that competence is a common attribute of theirs.
The alleged humans in the current administration are not exactly a huge pool of talent.
Vance has not been in the spotlight as much as there are plenty of distractions by his colleagues. If he becomes # 48 he will be scrutinized at a different level. While he is housebroken and does not eat roadkill he is hardly ‘charismatic’. The former MAGA movement will not pay him more heed than they did deSantis.
I learned as a kid that racists weren’t actually the best people. You don’t have to assert your superiority at every opportunity if everyone can just… see it.
But Trump is the person they want to lead them? This bungling old fraud? You’d have a hard time finding a worse example of superiority than some parasite who had everything handed to him and still manages to screw up everything he touches. What a low bar they’ve set for themselves. I suppose it’s nice of them to admit they’re just as rubbish as everyone else thinks they are.
‘But Trump is the person they want to lead them?’
They are dim, but not that dim.
(They imagine Trump will enable that racism, so who is leading who?)
Surely the only point in his running a third time is so that he can, er, uncover so much election fraud —like you never believed possible— that election results must be put on hold for just two weeks, maybe three. Though he hasn’t thought about it.
The ethnic group that historically has done the most damage to USA are white, anglo-saxon protestants. Especially the wealthy ones. Because they are influential enough to do maximum damage when they go bad.
Birger, sure. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay did the most damage to the USA.
(The map is not the territory)
@14 John Morales
How does the founding fathers being WASP negate people of that ancestry causing the most damage? The other side of the war of independence would have plenty of them too.
Also, as daft as it is labelling anyone as Anglo Saxon beyond the 11th century, Hamilton I think has Scottish and French Huguenot ancestry.
I think the leaders of the Confederacy were pretty white, in addition to being protestants.
The televangelists and leaders of the Religious right might also fit. The point is, Mack the Knife or some nasty Black dude in your neighborhood is unlikely to ruin the country single-handed. You need someone like Dubya to fuck up on a really big scale.
Recently, we got brown-ish numbskulls like Kash Patel but they stand out by remarkable privilege. So does wossname that SCOTUS judge.
Let us propose to Trump that anyone who has committed fraud totaling, say, $25 million, should be stripped of their citizenship and should be deported to a prison in Latin America. That includes fraudulent foundations, fraudulent “universities”, and business accounting fraud.
“How does the founding fathers being WASP negate people of that ancestry causing the most damage?”
The claim at hand is ‘The ethnic group that historically has done the most damage to USA are white, anglo-saxon protestants.’ which includes the Founding Fathers of the USA.
It’s not negating it as such; point is they created the USA, and only once it was created could the USA be damaged. Obviously they are the group with greatest wealth and structural power, so they can do most harm or good, but the USA’s very existence is due to them.