Minnesota riots continued after Walz took ‘responsibility to ensure’ there wouldn’t be chaos
Vice President Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, claimed responsibility for preventing riots in Minneapolis in the spring of 2020 as the city spiraled into chaos and destruction, recently unearthed comments show.
"The responsibility to ensure it doesn't happen falls upon me, and I will do everything in my power to do that," Walz told the media on May 29, 2020, when asked if "we're not going to see a repeat of the unrest last night, tonight or for the rest of the weekend."
Walz noted that he couldn’t "assure" the media that riots wouldn’t continue to unfold, but he highlighted that it was his personal responsibility to work to prevent destruction.
"As I said, I spent, myself, 24 years in the National Guard. I’m surrounded by good people. We’re pulling the assets, and I’m going to need the help of Minnesotans, like we do on a lot of this. I’m going to need folks to cooperate to get this through. I want to acknowledge, again, that pain that people are feeling, the need to get justice," he continued.
Minneapolis was the epicenter of the 2020 riots, which were sparked when George Floyd, a Black man, died at the hands of a White officer during a police encounter in the city. Floyd’s death was followed by social justice protests and riots across the nation, which came at a time when COVID-19 cases and government-mandated lockdown measures meant to control the pandemic upended society in unprecedented ways ahead of the 2020 election.
After Walz’s comments on May 29, 2020, Minneapolis was again rocked by riots that evening, according to local media reports.
"Protesters blanketed the area near the Fifth Precinct, heavily damaging at least seven buildings – including a U.S. Post Office, a Wells Fargo branch, a staffing agency and a Subway in a nearby strip mall," the Star Tribune reported at the time.
The outlet in a separate article described the evening of May 29 into the following morning as "perhaps the worst night in [Minneapolis’] history" as residents of an apartment building recalled jumping out of bed at 4 a.m. while a neighboring building that housed an O'Reilly Auto Parts store and a Family Dollar burned.
More than 1,500 buildings in the city were damaged or destroyed due to the riots, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
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"Where I live now, people are disgusted by Tim Walz. But where I live now doesn’t represent a large swath of Minnesota’s population," Max Rymer, who moved with his wife and two children from a neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis to a suburb about 45 minutes north of the city in 2020, told Fox News Digital in a previous comment this week.
Rymer is running as a Republican for the Minnesota House of Representatives and said he "still can't believe there are people in the state who support the guy after" what residents "have been through the last four years."
Walz deployed the Minnesota National Guard on May 30, with the state’s National Guard saying at the time that it was "'all-in' to restore order."
The riots plaguing the Twin Cities were "no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd," said Walz at the time.
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"Our great cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are under assault," Walz said. "The situation in Minneapolis is now about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great city."
The move earned praise from then-President Trump, who lauded Walz in a phone call with governors.
"What they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately," Trump told Walz and the others on the call.
His comments came as other cities, stretching from Seattle to New York City, saw riots that police departments alone were hard-pressed to handle. Portland, Oregon, for example, saw at least 100 nights of rioting and protests that summer.
Though Walz did mobilize the state’s National Guard just days after the riots began, locals have said the Democrat governor acted slowly to curb the destruction.
"I called the White House after [four] days of unbridled rioting with the Governor frozen on what to do," Republican state Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka wrote on X on July 28. "I know that Gov[.] Walz and Pres[ident] Trump talked. I know Walz finally brought the Guard out in full for the next night. But Walz was [three] days too late. Pressure may have made him move."
Minnesota’s first lady, Gwen Walz, set social media ablaze this week after an unearthed clip of her describing how she handled the riots went viral.
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"Again we had more sleepless nights during the riots," Walz's wife told KSTP in July 2020. "I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing. And I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening."
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Critics and conservatives slammed the remarks as "bizarre" on social media.
"What might you call this? Bizarre? Abnormal? Peculiar? Eccentric? Offbeat? Quirky?" wrote Noah Rothman, a senior writer at the National Review Online. "Gotta be a word that describes reveling in the catharsis represented by the torching of other people’s property."
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk described the comments as "weird."
Harris named Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, with the Minnesota Democrat winning the ticket spot against other reported contenders such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. Harris rose to the top of the ticket after President Biden dropped out of the race amid mounting concerns over his mental acuity and pressure from Democrats that he pass the torch to another candidate.
Fox News Digital's Audrey Conklin and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.