In April 2020 Minnesota Governor Tim Walz seized the opportunity to declare an emergency and rule the state by tyrannical decree for 15 months. After 15 months the legislature tired of his routine and forced him to give it up.
At the University of Minnesota Law School commencement this weekend, Walz disparaged President Trump as “a tyrant abusing power to persecute scapegoats and enemies.” We might take that as another case of leftist projection. However, Walz also derided ICE agents as “modern-day Gestapo.” Hank Long covered the story for Alpha News. The story includes the video below.
During a commencement ceremony speech at the U of M, Gov. Tim Walz described federal ICE agents as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” pic.twitter.com/D6mFIyH9Pm
— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) May 18, 2025
Here I want to ask your indulgence to repeat a point or two I have made previously. With me they are sore points that bear repetition.
Then a Republican state senator, physician Scott Jensen ran against Walz in the 2022 Minnesota gubernatorial campaign. Having opposed the incredibly arbitrary and destructive one-man rule that Walz imposed during the Covid regime — Walz never wanted it to end — Jensen made an issue of it.
Speaking to an enthusiastic audience at a quadrennial event of the Minnesota chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Jensen cited The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany. I was there. We gave Jensen a standing ovation.
The event was off the record and closed to the press. However, the Star Tribune obtained a covert recording of Jensen’s remarks and turned them into a controversy with a page-one story. The Star Tribune then followed up in “Walz calls on Jensen to apologize for comments on COVID, Nazi Germany.” The follow-up story included this passage:
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wants his Republican opponent Scott Jensen to apologize for comments likening COVID-19 mandates to measures during the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, calling the comparison “hurtful and dangerous.”
Several Jewish groups and elected officials have criticized Jensen for the comments and asked him to stop making the comparison, saying it’s insensitive to liken anything to the Holocaust [Ed.: which Jensen hadn’t done].
“The community itself simply said stop, and a simple apology and moving on would have moved us on to other things,” Walz said in a Friday campaign news conference. “But now it’s apparent this is not a slip of the tongue. This is not a random issue. This an arrogance of dismissing people who know and understanding that the governor’s rhetoric has immense impact on the citizens of Minnesota.”
Jensen defended his comments this week, including in front of a crowd of Jewish Republicans, saying Democrats are trying to distract voters from their record on issues such as crime and the economy.
Jensen received a standing ovation from the largely Jewish audience, including me. The Star Tribune reporter wasn’t there and didn’t know. She could have found out if she had asked any of us, but she didn’t.
Sitting next to me in the front of the room was my friend Rudy Boschwitz. Rudy is the former two-term Minnesota Senator. He was born in Berlin in 1930. When Hitler was made chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Rudy’s father immediately declared that the family would leave the country. They emigrated from Germany and made their way to the United States two-and-a-half years later. Relatives who stayed behind perished in the Holocaust.
Rudy has been an ardent advocate of Jewish causes and of America’s alliance with Israel before, during, and after his tenure in the Senate. The Star Tribune wasn’t there and didn’t mention it, of course, but Rudy led the standing ovation for Jensen.
I wrote about all this at the time in “Who owns German history?” and “A manufactured controversy.” Walz’s quoted comments made for the jumble of lying and blather to which we have become accustomed.
Earlier this year before a friendly audience of union nurses Walz complained (recording at the link): “I see the pundits on TV, ‘what’s wrong with the Democratic Party?’ What’s wrong is our country’s being stolen by fascists and Nazis, and we’re trying to do all we can…”
Asked about it afterwards, Walz stuck with it. He is a compulsive liar and a creep. This is what he had to say:
WATCH: Tim Walz tries to clean up his “fascists and Nazis” comment, claims that he wasn’t referring to Republicans but “people who are openly Nazis and fascists.”
“No I’m not going to apologize … be better.”
In a Facebook comment, another nurse who was there said it was… pic.twitter.com/mjP3Z16GF4
— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) February 27, 2025
In his 2022 comments Walz referred to “the community” which “simply said stop.” The Jews in Jensen’s audience were part of “the community” — indeed, it was an event sponsored by a partisan Jewish organization — but we didn’t count. Walz was referring to the official spokesmen of the community such as the Jewish Community Relations Council. They stupidly jumped on Jensen at the time and haven’t been heard on the subject since. It’s funny, but the cat has their tongue now. And Walz’s invocation of the Nazis has become so routine that the Star Tribune relies on Jill Colvin’s AP story to report on Walz’s current ravings.
