President Donald Trump and Border Czar Tom Homan reached out to Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Mayor Jacob Frey to see if they could get more cooperation in Minnesota.
While both sides claimed progress, you would expect some spin from the Democrats to make themselves look better to their base, but the language from them, particularly from Tim Walz, was not good. Indeed, it may have been the craziest thing that he's said yet, and that's saying something, on the Tim Walz scale of crazy. This interview with The Atlantic is after he had spoken to Trump and Homan.
Check out this woeful face:
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz worries that the violence in his state could produce a national rupture:
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) January 29, 2026
“I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” https://t.co/yStkbVyqJS
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz worries that the violence in his state could produce a national rupture. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” he mused today in an interview in his office at the state capitol. The island fortification near Charleston, South Carolina, is where Confederate forces fired the first shots of the Civil War in 1861. Now it’s federal forces that are risking a breach. “It’s a physical assault,” Walz told me. “It’s an armed force that’s assaulting, that’s killing my constituents, my citizens.”
He let his question about Fort Sumter hang without an answer.
Doesn't he get what side that puts him on?
That's insane. He's literally going there, referencing potential civil war, and blaming the federal government for enforcing the law, while trying to fight that enforcement. He's accusing the federal government of attacking his state.
So is he basically admitting it's an insurrection?
When I asked him explicitly if he thought the United States was barreling toward an armed internal struggle, he hedged. “Well, I don’t want to alarm people,” he said. He switched into the third person, saying that some of his constituents think “Governor Walz should call in the National Guard and arrest ICE.”
The governor isn’t inclined to do this. He mobilized his state’s National Guard, but to deliver doughnuts and hot chocolate to observers and protesters who have sought to document and contest ICE’s presence. He saluted their commitment to nonviolence, saying that the restraint exercised by the vast majority of his constituents may be what averts an even deeper crisis. After invoking Fort Sumter, he brought up John Brown, the abolitionist who stormed a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859, fueling violent conflict over slavery that erupted in the Civil War.
“Guns pointed, American at American,” he said, “is certainly not where we want to go.”
Again, this is a first-class delusion. Arrest ICE for what? It's leftists who have been breaking the law here by obstructing ICE, and Walz has helped to whip up the mania. He and The Atlantic can't whitewash the agitators as just folks who "sought to document and contest ICE's presence" like they just filed a lawsuit. They've obstructed and attacked federal agents. They are not "committed to nonviolence." He's clearly sending mixed messages while invoking more Civil War verbiage.
He gave the president two conditions for their working more closely together: removing federal agents and allowing the state to take part in probes into the two killings.
First, Trump is not going to remove all the federal agents. If the state and local officials cooperate, he may remove extra agents he doesn't otherwise need. Second, the state and local people have shown complete bias when it comes to the two cases. I don't think I've ever seen state officials do something like this before, declaring the shootings "murder" despite the evidence we've seen in the Good case to justify the shooting and the facts still being adduced in the Pretti case.
How can the federal agents involved believe the cases would be evaluated fairly in an environment where officials like Walz have already determined their guilt?
Walz also had the audacity to think he's the one who gets to dictate terms here.
He said he gave Homan a window of several days to reorient the operation. That window closes tomorrow. “If we don’t see a massive change here,” Walz told Homan, “I have no choice but to go back and tell my folks that you’re not doing it.”
Um, Tim? You're the guy who's on the short leash here. It's Trump who's given you this opportunity to cooperate, to straighten up and fly right. You don't get to reject the enforcement of federal law.
But if all that wasn't crazy enough, this certainly topped it off, as he elevated a conspiracy about the midterm elections.
Walz won’t be on the ballot in November’s election, but he thinks the contest is at the heart of the administration’s tactics. The Justice Department’s demand for Minnesota’s voter rolls, he said, was the giveaway. The president’s party, he predicted, will be “wiped out” in a free and fair vote—assuming there is one.
“But I hear Americans on this,” he added. What they say is, “‘What makes you think we can get to November?’”
Now, Walz may just be trying to act tough for the base here, but if he doesn't cooperate, it will soon be evident. Then Trump can say he gave him his shot, and take more action. And it's Walz, so he's always talking through his hat. But this is crazy talk that ramps things up, rather than toning things down.
READ MORE: Embattled MN Gov. Makes Big Announcement About Political Future, but What He Leaves Out Is Pure Walz
It's perhaps no surprise that he's not running again.
But he seems to want to continue his embarrassing actions on the way out.
