Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz gave a scathing response to President Trump’s explanation about why he did not order flags to be lowered to half-staff after the murder of a Democratic politician.
Melissa Hortman, a leading member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was shot dead in her Brooklyn Park home in June by a man impersonating a police officer. Her husband was also shot dead.
Hortman was later found to be on a list of Democrats to be targeted by 57-year-old Trump supporter Vance Boelter, who has been charged with their murder.
The president was asked in the Oval Office on Tuesday why U.S. flags were not lowered in the wake of the politically motivated attack. A reporter pointed out that flags were lowered after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered at Utah Valley University in Orem last week, but not after Hortman and her husband were killed.
“Well, if the governor had asked me to do that, I would have done that, but the governor of Minnesota didn’t ask me,” Trump said, referring to Kamala Harris’s running mate last year. Walz said on Tuesday he would be seeking a third term as governor next year.
Reacting to Trump’s comments on MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, Walz said that Hortman’s death had been “reduced to a footnote.”
“It’s been pretty traumatic in Minnesota,” Walz told Psaki. “Nothing surprises me. There’s no compassion. There’s no empathy in this man, and there’s no sense of, of governing for the whole country. We had a horrific act of political violence and the loss of an exceptional human being, a mom. Just, just it’s hard to explain to people. And it gets reduced to a footnote. This beautiful life, this big life.”
He said that “disrespect rolled off” Trump’s tongue. “Yet we’re supposed to believe that they’re definitely concerned about political violence. And you see the vice president, you know, go on a podcast, it’s government by podcast, to just lie, and to bring hate. And they’re not interested in solving this.”
Walz was referring to JD Vance standing in to host Kirk’s podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show. During the two-hour show, the vice president paid tribute to his friend and blamed the left for his death.
Vance angrily claimed it was a fact that “most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left.”
Trump has struck a similar tone, railing against the “radical” left. His strong reaction, and that of the right generally, has stoked fears that his administration is trying to harness outrage over the killing to suppress political opposition.
Walz brought up a shooting attack on children as they were praying at a church in Minneapolis in August. Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed. The governor said he would bet that Trump doesn’t even know the names of these children.
“Two weekends in a row. We’ve gone to memorial services for an 8- and 10-year-old, to hear about these beautiful lives. And I guarantee you, Donald Trump doesn’t know their names—and he’s out there doing this,” he said. “He doesn’t care.”
In the aftermath of the attack that killed the Hortmans, Trump spoke out to condemn political violence, but soon returned to shading Walz. “Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump, however, also refused to call Walz to offer condolences, saying it would only “waste time.”
“I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked-out. I’m not calling,” Trump told reporters. “Why would I call him?”
“Two weeks ago, Tim Walz gleefully mused about President Trump being dead and leaned into online BlueAnon conspiracy theories about it—he is the last person who should be talking about compassion and empathy,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the Daily Beast.
BlueAnon, a play on the MAGA QAnon conspiracy, refers to liberal conspiracy theories.
After Trump spent a few days out of the spotlight last month, Walz appeared to reference a frenzy of unfounded rumors that Trump had died or was about to die.
“You get up in the morning and you doom scroll through things, and although I will say this, you woke up the last few days thinking there might be news,” Walz said at a Labor Day event. “Just saying, just saying. There will be news sometime, just so you know. There will be news.”
