Tim Walz Is a Reckless Menace

By Noah Rothman 

Thursday, January 09, 2026 

As is often the case, Jim Geraghty has already said what every responsible American stakeholder in our shared prosperity and security should be thinking in this moment: that times like these demand a more responsible cast of political and cultural commentators than what we have right now. 

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is only one of many reckless figures presently at the forefront of American politics. He may be, however, one of the nation’s more irresponsibly impetuous characters. 

In the hours since a fatal ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis, Walz has made it clear that he has put his own concerns for his political legacy ahead of the nation’s immediate interests. Amid the governor’s perfunctory calls for calm as tensions flare among ICE’s critics, Walz chose to inflame passions and reinforce the delusions maintained by those who are already convinced the United States is descending into violently repressive authoritarianism. 

In his press conferences following the shooting, Walz has repeatedly flattered the left-wing demonstrators amassing in the streets in opposition to ICE’s activities — unduly crediting them for their interminable commitment to peaceable assembly. In much the same way that California Democrats took ownership of the rioters in Los Angeles who burned Teslas and Waymos for sport by noting that the violence imperiled their shared policy goals, Walz implicitly aligned himself with the demonstrators by beseeching them to avoid playing into the GOP’s hands. “We can’t give them what they want,” he declared — emphasis on “we.” 

On Wednesday, Walz announced that he had issued a “warning order” to the Minnesota National Guard — not to prepare for the prospect of lawlessness but to protect Minnesotans from the marauding agents of the federal government. To his credit, the governor repeatedly called for peace from those who shared his “anger,” and he duly chided Trump administration officials who rendered definitive pronouncements on the events that unfolded in Minneapolis before the facts were in. But Walz was not any more circumspect than the targets of his critique. 

“We’ve never been at war with our federal government,” the governor inexplicably declared. The implication in Walz’s use of the present perfect tense is that the condition he describes — “war with the federal government” — was not Minnesotans’ previous experience until now. 

“We don’t see a desire to work with us on public safety,” Walz continued. “We hear a demonization of our state.” Indeed, “We do not need any further help from the federal government,” the governor added. 

Though he emphasized the need for peaceful protest, Walz stressed that it is every Americans’ “patriotic duty” to “get out and protest and speak up to this administration” far beyond Minnesota’s borders. “If you’re in Portland, or you’re in L.A., or you’re in Chicago, or . . . wherever they’re coming next, stand with us — stand with us against this.” We are “not living in a normal world,” Walz mused. And yet, he pondered, perhaps this moment would catalyze a reversion to a more familiar status quo ante. “Maybe we’re at our McCarthy moment,” Walz speculated: “Do you have no decency?”

 

The famous quote from attorney Joseph Welch addressed to Senator Joseph McCarthy is, “Have you no decency, sir?” which has the inestimable advantage of being syntactically correct. 

Despite the governor’s rote calls for peace, if not calm, his repeated solicitation for mass protests and his attacks on the federal government seem designed to foment the very phenomenon he supposedly sought to deter. Indeed, at a subsequent press conference on Thursday, Walz made it clear that he plans to treat federal immigration enforcement agents as though they were a hostile force. 

In his remarks, the governor said he had been asked if state law enforcement would be dispatched to protect migrants by using public schools as safe houses. “They mentioned Ruby Bridges and the Little Rock folks,” Walz confessed — a reference to one of the famous “Little Rock Nine” students who were escorted into Arkansas’s desegregated schools with the aid of federal troops. “It is a situation we’re going to have to explore,” the governor continued. Indeed, Walz strongly implied that ICE was all but destined to target schoolchildren next. “This tragedy will be magnified one hundred fold if this fight moves into the hallways of our public schools amongst our youth,” he said. 

In one especially cloying moment, Walz paraphrased a passage from Orwell’s 1984. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” he recounted. “It certainly feels like that in this moment,” Walz mourned. He insisted that he was not advising Minnesotans “not to be angry, not to be scared, not to be feeling a little bit hopeless in this moment.” Presumably, the only rational response is to succumb to all of the above. 

“I’d like to ask you to care,” Walz added on Thursday, “but that might be a step too far for some people.” 

Give the governor whatever credit he deserves for stressing the need for peace and his opposition toward violent demonstrations. But the subtext of Walz’s remarks renders violence an all but logical response to this week’s events: You should be enraged, which is only possible if you’ve reached the very snap judgments Walz criticized in Trump administration officials. You should regard federal law enforcement as a hostile, nigh inhuman force — the agents of an Orwellian despotism, in fact. You should conclude that trigger-happy feds are as eager to slaughter children as they are innocent protesters. And you should conclude that, just as American schools were desegregated by force, the proper remedy to the misapplication of the state’s monopoly on violence is the equal application of state-sponsored force in opposition. 

It is charitable, perhaps even reasonable, to assume that Tim Walz has no idea what he’s saying and doesn’t grasp his remarks’ implications. Whether he knows it or not, the governor is playing with fire. 

Update: “When things looked bleak, it was Minnesota’s 1st that held that line for the nation on July 3rd, 1863,” Walz added on Thursday, “and I think now we may be in that moment.” 

Absolute menace.